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VIBRATION AND LIFE 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 

/ 

d: t. smith, m. d. 

Formerly Lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence, Uni- 
versity of Louisville; Member of the Louisville 
Bar; Author oj '" Philosophy of Memory ," 
"Obstetric Problems, etc.^ 

Nil tarn diffieile est quin quaorendo investigari possit 




RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 
BOSTON 



Copyright 1912 by D. T. Smith 
All rights ressrved 



*K 



i. 



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The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 

©CU 31 923 3 



PREFACE 

IN venturing to offer to the reading public this out- 
come of nearly half a century of thought, study and 
labor, it is not without a deep sense of its imperfec- 
tions, a lingering misgiving of the reception it may 
meet, and of uncertainty as to the value that may be 
accorded it. 

The various departments of the subject embraced in this 
dissertation cover so broad a field, are so recondite and 
have called forth so many bold and venturesome hypothe- 
ses, that scant ground is afforded for the hope that it will 
not develop that many erroneous conclusions have been 
reached and that many of the facts adduced have been 
misinterpreted. 

It may, however, be urged with reason that since so 
great a number of apt analogies between the general laws 
of external nature and those controlling the development 
and activities of organic life have been shown to exist, 
and so many striking and puzzling phenomena have been 
supplied with a plausible interpretation by the theory 
here sought to be sustained, that the truth even if not 
rightly apprehended, has at least been not remotely 
paralleled. 

The principles here under discussion involve many of 
the most important interests that can evoke human con- 
cern or invite human attention. The operative factors in 
the case cannot be under the control of accident. The 
phenomena described must have a determining cause, 
and the forces underlying them must manifest themselves 
in conformity with natural laws. 

At all events it may be confidently asserted that if 
nothing more has been accomplished by these endeavors, 
the treatment of the theme after the method here pursued 



PREFACE 

cannot wholly fail to prove suggestive to the minds of other 
investigators and to incite further research and elucida- 
tion. 

When the author first began to entertain and enunciate 
the views here advocated, he was not aware that any 
writer had previously broached them. Wider acquain- 
tance with the literature of the subject, however, has 
revealed that similar thoughts have occupied the minds 
of others time and again. But no one, so far as yet appears, 
has hitherto attempted to reduce the underlying principles 
to a definite system, unless the effort of Swedenborg may 
be so described. 

The anonymous author of "Vestiges of the Creation" 
closes the chapter of that work entitled, "The Mental 
Constitution of Animals," with the following suggestive 
words, "The inorganic has one final comprehensive law, 
GRAVITATION. The organic, the other great depart- 
ment of mundane things, rests in like manner upon one 
law, and that is DEVELOPMENT. Nor can even these 
be after all twain, but only one more comprehensive law, 
the expression of that unity which man's wit can scarcely 
separate from Deity itself. " 

Can it be that in the form of the most subtle vibrations, 
which the motions of the ultimate particles of material 
elements can impose upon the ether, is to be found the 
expression of that unity beyond which the wit of man 
may never venture, and which is threaded through and 
through with the law and the prophecy of evolution? 

It only remains now to be said that, in the fond hope 
that these long-indulged meditations may not prove 
wholly empty of contribution in the way of assisting fellow 
wanderers toward better things and a higher and nobler 
life, this fruit of a life-long labor of love is confidently, but 
with deference, sent forth on its errand. 



CONTENTS 

Introduction 

A Theory of Organic Evolution Based on Vibration. . . 9 

The Nature of Life 10 

Terms Denned 12 

Characteristics of Energy 13 

The Vital Force 15 

Common Notions of the Soul 16 

Soul, the Agent or Active Principle of Reproduction. 17 

Resume of Argument 20 

An Ocean of Life 22 

Is All Life One? 23 

The Nature of Mind 27 

Thoughts and Things 28 

A Special Vital Corpuscle 31 

Sex Among Corpuscles 31 

Is All Expression of Energy Vibratory? 33 

Is Gravitation Vibratory? 37 

Softening of Waves by Time and Distance 41 

Softening of Sound Waves 42 

Softening of Light Waves 44 

Resume 48 

The Brain and Its Activities 48 

Optic Thalamus and Corpus Striatum 51 

Functions of Neurons and Axons 52 

Theory of Memory 56 

Memory an Active Process 59 

Constitution of Ideas 61 

Vital Corpuscles and Heredity 62 

Parallels and Analogies in Vital and Physical Forces. . 64 

Consciousness 66 

Analogies of Expression in Animals 67 

Nature of Memory 69 

The Theory Formulated 77 



Limitation of Sensation 80 

Mechanism of Impressions 82 

Changes in Thought Forms 84 

Analogies of Thought 86 

Growth of Ideas 88 

Uniformity of Thought Products 88 

General and Abstract Ideas 91 

The Origin of Language 92 

Fictitious Enlargement of the Idea 94 

Time Elements in Impressions 95 

Apparent Shortness of Time 96 

The Lagging of Memory in Dreams 97 

Undulations Illimitable 100 

Of the Nature of Ideas 103 

Emotions 105 

Nature of Association 106 

An Emotion Analyzed 108 

Initiation of Remembrances Ill 

Memory and Consciousness Beyond the Grave 113 

Sympathy and Suggestion 117 

Crowd Psychology 120 

Brain Emanations 122 

Mind Reading and Telepathy 125 

Experiences of Miss Mollie Fancher 126 

The Watseka Wonder 129 

Telepathy in Lower Animals 132 

The Will 132 

Freedom of the Will 135 

Determinism and Reward 137 

Possibility of Race Betterment 140 

Emphasis and Inflection 142 

Basis of Emphasis 143 

Instinct and Reason 148 

The True, The Beautiful and The Good 159 

The Source of Moral Law 166 

Conscience 168 

Religion 171 



INTRODUCTION 

THE theme of the following treatise has been at 
intervals for more than fifty years, in one form 
or another, a subject of earnest thought and 
careful investigation on the part of the author. 
From an early period of his medical studies begun in 1861, 
the problem of the origin and reproduction of living forms 
with their incident functions has continued to press upon 
his mind for solution. 

At first the response was crude enough indeed; but 
gradually new facts were gathered and new thoughts were 
suggested, until the matter began to take on the form of a 
somewhat definite theory. When some years later the 
author was required, as was then the custom, to present 
a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Medicine in the Univer- 
sity of Louisville, the subject that had so much occupied 
his mind was selected for a theme under the title, "Pro- 
gressive Atomic Development." 

In this thesis the contention was urged that the soul is 
constituted of a peculiar and refined energy, which is 
inherent in a class of atoms likewise refined and peculiar 
but withal ponderable. But since all the coarse forms of 
atoms then known to chemistry seemed capable of passing 
from one individual body to another, and were constantly 
doing so, it appeared to the author to be quite improbable 
that such atoms could constitute the essential basis of life. 
Furthermore, the contention seemed reasonable that 
every indication pointed to the conclusion that all the then 



INTRODUCTION 

known simple atomic elements, as well as their various 
combinations, have a uniform tendency to pass into a 
state of definite and stable crystallization. 

It was thereupon inferred that processes, which to every 
appearance are uniformly antagonistic to crystal formation 
such as the vital processes in their constructive manifest- 
ations all seem to be, must in all likelihood be based upon a 
more refined atom than any theretofore taken account of in 
the current chemistry, and one of more complex capabili- 
ties. Likewise, the refined energy referred to as the 
assumed basis of life, was supposed to be as much more 
subtle than the common energy, as the vital corpuscle was 
supposed to be more refined than the coarse atom of the 
then current chemistry. 

These supposed refined atoms with their associated vital 
force, it was assumed, have an inherent tendency to enter 
into the building up of definite and orderly organic forms, 
in some such way as the coarse atoms with their associated 
energy, tend to enter into the production of crystalline 
forms. It was further contended that the refined vital 
atoms are progressively modified and developed, while 
passing from the lowest forms of life up through inter- 
mediate forms to man. Toward man they were all sup- 
posed to converge, and to merge in him, thus constitut- 
ing him literally and truly the microcosm. 

The so-called essential vital atoms of this theory were 
supposed to maintain a constant movement of vibration 
and these vibrations operating in various groupings and 
combinations, directed the common coarse elements of 
matter so as to give form to all bodily tissues and organs, 
and ultimately to all thought, feeling and memory as well. 

Step by step this theory was elaborated, modified and 
partly rejected, until in 1872 its ^discussion -had attained 
the dimensions of a manuscript of some 200 pages designed 



INTRODUCTION 

for publication in book-form. The design was never 
carried into effect, however, but the manuscript is still 
preserved. 

Several years later, when an opportunity was offered 
for the publication of a brief statement of the theory in 
pamphlet form, the title, "Philosophy of Memory," was 
chosen for it in preference to the original designation. 
Later still, when in the year 1898, the theory was set forth 
in book-form, along with a proffered solution of several 
other problems which pertain to natural physics, this 
title was still adhered to. In order to justify in some 
measure the selection of the title chosen, more particular 
attention was given in that publication to bringing out 
the psychic features of the problem, and this to the partial 
elimination or neglect of those relating to their physical 
or corporeal aspect. 

In the form in which the theory is now set forth the title, 
"Philosophy of Memory," even under the most strained 
application, could not be made entirely appropriate. The 
title "Vibration and Life," given in the present publication 
has consequently been selected, though it too, it must be 
confessed, is not as applicable or as fully descriptive as 
might be desired. 

Up to the time that an incomplete presentation of this 
theory was published in book-form, the author entertained 
no doubt that he was entirely original in the views set 
forth. But some two years since he was agreeably sur- 
prised by having had pointed out to him the fact that Plato 
had suggested the relation of vibrations to vital manifesta- 
tions. Quite recently he has had an opportunity of 
examining a booklet by Immanuel Swedenborg entitled, 
"On Tremulation" in which similar views are maintained. 
This work of Swedenborg was written in 1719, or nearly 
two hundred years ago, but not published in this country 



INTRODUCTION 

or translated into English until 1899, a year subsequent 
to the publication of "The Philosophy of Memory" by the 
author. 

The title or heading of the first chapter of Swendenborg's 
treatise is "Arguments showing that our Vital Force con- 
sists mostly of little vibrations, that is, Tremulations." 
This, it must be remembered, was long before the discovery 
of the vibratory nature of light by Sir Thomas Young, or 
of the discovery of the character of energy in general. 

But Swedenborg goes even farther and treats, though not 
always consistently or clearly, of extremely fine vibrations 
for which he coins the term "contremiscences," thus again 
paralleling and anticipating the notion of extremely subtle 
vibrations suggested by the author. 

Vibration as the expression of every possible character 
of the manifestation of energy is now coming to be almost 
universally recognized, and it is not believed that in the 
final outcome, less will be conceded to it than is claimed 
for it in this essay. As regards the momentous vital 
principles and mental, moral, and religious laws involved 
in the investigation and discussion that follows, the reader 
must be left to decide whether or not progress has been 
made toward their elucidation. 

That more than a beginning has been made toward over- 
coming the difficulties and surmounting the obstacles 
that encumber and beset the problem, the author would be 
only too happy to feel assured. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 



A THEORY OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION BASED ON VIBRATION 

UNTIL quite a recent period investigators 
sought to gain insight into the workings of the 
human mind, mainly through the interrogation 
of consciousness. To this task large numbers 
of the most acute intellects of preceding ages addressed 
themselves, and seemingly everything of practical value 
attainable by that method had been revealed. Such an 
impression was greatly strengthened by the marked bar- 
renness that had characterized all recent efforts in that 
direction. 

With full recognition of the wealth of knowledge revealed 
by this method, but convinced that the mine was practi- 
cally exhausted to it, the world of science and philosophy 
gladly welcomed the advent of the doctrine of evolution as 
seemingly offering a more promising outcome. And 
evolution has indeed shed a flood of light into many dark 
recesses hitherto almost wholly unexplored. It has in 
this respect been truly rich in revelation; but many 
questions of the deepest import it has left, and seems des- 
tined still to leave, practically untouched. 

Still more recently a new school of psychologists has 
arisen, or rather it might be said that the adherents of the 
older methods of investigation have joined in the expedient 
of seeking by direct experiment to ascertain the nature of 
mind or life on the psychic side, as physiologists had long 



10 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

studied the manifestations of life on the physical side. 
Very much that is both interesting and instructive has 
in this way been disclosed and doubtless still more of even 
greater value will yet be discovered. But this method also 
is clearly destined to fall far short of a full and satisfactory 
solution of the difficult problem. 

It remains then to endeavor to combine all of these 
methods and to supplement them with any helpful infer- 
ences that may be drawn from whatever is known of the 
plan or the rule and order of nature in the development of 
life, before we can hope to lay bare this most recondite of 
her secrets. Such an undertaking involves necessarily the 
entire problem of life, and even the still broader question 
of the nature of energy in general. 

For, deeply interesting as are the many questions 
relating to the phenomena of what is known as mind, there 
are others still more enchaining, still more recondite, that 
present themselves to the thoughtful inquirer into the 
nature of the original source of mental manifestations. 
These questions relate more especially to the principle of 
life itself, to the quickening essence of which mental mani- 
festations are merely the products on the one hand, even 
as physical forms are on the other. 

The Nature of Life 

What then is life? What is the soul? From what vast 
mysterious storehouse comes the unending well of vital 
energy that feeds the illimitable stream of life? And 
whither does each vital spark betake itself when it has 
ceased to animate or vivify the body it has built and oc- 
cupied for a habitation? These are inquiries that have 
never failed seriously to impress themselves upon earnest 
seekers, and they involve also questions that no man has 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 11 

yet been able to answer with anything like entire satis- 
faction to himself, or to any discriminating searcher for 
truth. 

The essence or even the substance that lies at the founda- 
tion of the phenomena of what we know as life and mind, 
it is not a venture to predict, will never be fully grasped by 
the human understanding. Whatever of light is shed upon 
the matter, whether gathered from introspection, from 
evolution or from experiment and analogy, must ever 
remain more or less obscure and uncertain. And even 
after help from every possible source has been invoked, 
and illumination from every flickering lamp has been 
borrowed, we may still only lightly hope to discern more 
than the first glimmerings of the dawn. 

And if mind and matter on the one hand seem to present 
to the investigator an impenetrable mystery as regards 
their ultimate basis, the body on the other hand, is well 
characterized as being, "fearfully and wonderfully made." 

At one period of the life of every animal and every vegeta- 
ble, the potency in the individual of all that it is ever to be, 
become or possess, of mind or body, exists in the form of a 
microscopic cell. In that cell there dwells the potentiality 
of all the physical form and mental function that ever 
after may appear or be developed. 

This does not apply to the coarse atoms such as carbon, 
sulphur, lime and the like, but to particles or corpuscles 
which no crucible as yet has ever caught or aided vision 
reached, and the product of whose peculiar crystallizing 
forces are organic forms. It is hoped to show in these 
pages, that it is such corpuscles as these which, by reason 
of the vibrations that are the expression of the energy that 
is inherent in them, build up the body as they also build up 
the mind; and that in them mind and body find a common 
starting point where they substantially meet and merge. 



12 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

It is the life history of these refined elementary corpuscles 
that is involved in the philosophy of vibration, which 
under the title of "Vibration and Life," it is here sought to 
portray. 

Terms Defined 

Preliminary to a discussion of the theme, it may be well 
first to mark out the limits of the field of our investigations, 
in order to point out what particular subjects these invest- 
igations are to embrace, and also what we are to understand 
by the particular terms to be employed. 

But before attempting to define and to set forth a 
conception of what is here understood by the terms, 
"soul," "life," and "mind," it is important, if not indis- 
pensable, to ascertain wherein lies the essential difference, 
if there be a difference, between the class of beings distinct- 
ly and admittedly possessed of intelligence, and the class 
or classes apparently without such endowment, and also 
whether a positive line can be drawn between the living 
and the non-living, between the organic and the inorganic. 
|i. Briefly speaking, it is impossible to lay down any con- 
stant rule, or to draw any hard and fast line on a basis of 
either mental or physical characteristics between man and 
the lower living forms, or anywhere among these lower 
forms; or even to say with assurance that by such rule or 
by such line, one part is distinctly separated or marked off 
from the other. 

Passing down the scale of organic beings, we find man 
and lower animal forms successively and gradually merging 
the one into the other, until we reach the very lowest 
grades of animal life, and even down through inter- 
mediate forms into the vegetable kingdom and the borders 
of the inorganic. Here for the first time, between the 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 13 

organic and the inorganic, do we find a distinct and unmis- 
takable line of demarkation. That line is constituted by 
the power or the capacity of automatically reproducing 
each after its kind. On one side of this line every species 
of being is favored with the power of reproducing in this 
way, on the other side none is so favored. 

In order to be enabled to realize the completeness of the 
distinction indicated by this division, it will be necessary 
first to examine briefly some of the characteristics of what 
are known as forms of the common force of nature, or the 
universal energy; and then to compare some of the princi- 
ples by which these are governed with certain of the laws or 
rules that seem to prevail with the manifestations of the 
so-called vital force. 

Characteristics of Energy 

The common forms of force, or the particular manifes- 
tations of the universal energy, as exhibited in the form 
of light, heat, actinism, chemical affinity, magnetism, 
Roentgen rays, radio-activity, mass motion, and the like, 
are all known to be convertible the one into the other, and 
that without any gain or loss that cannot be accounted 
for. It is now held as demonstrated truth, and has, 
indeed, become an accepted canon of science, that no ad- 
dition to, or diminution of the total of the energy in the 
universe, can at any time or by any power be effected. It 
is also held by the highest order of minds to be wholly 
unthinkable that energy ever could by any possibility or 
by any power whatever be either created or annihilated. 

If the power of creating energy were conceded to a 
being of even infinite might, it could mean nothing more 
than the possibility of transforming infinite will or power 
into a special form of energy. And if there be conceded 



14 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

a creator separate and distinct from what is conceived to 
be creature, the creative act could be nothing else than 
the transformation of creative energy or creative power, 
into created thing or creature. Furthermo*e, if a creator 
could transform any part of his power, which is himself, 
into forms separate and distinct from, and it may even 
be inimical to the will of such Creator, then all energy can 
be so transformed. In that event the Creator will have 
become wholly creature, and will have abdicated the 
control of the universe. Then will have supervened that 
state which in name is dreaded by so many, and even 
regarded with something akin to horror — a state of true 
atheism. 

A quantity of coal or other combustible, when con- 
sumed, will produce by the chemical union of its elements 
with the oxygen of the air, a definite measure of heat. 
This heat may in turn be transformed into light, elec- 
tricity, or magnetism, and each of these may be success- 
ively employed in imparting motion to a mass, or in the 
performance of various kinds of work. 

But this light, heat, electricity, magnetism, or mass 
motion, cannot in any true or ultimate sense, be said 
to have been produced by the chemical affinity of the 
constituents of the coal and oxygen. The chemical energy 
latent in the coal and oxygen has simply been changed or 
transformed successively into these several forms or 
special manifestations of energy. Furthermore, if after 
carrying this energy through every possible form, and 
then back to the one begun with, we could gather up all 
the waste and all the spent energy, we should have 
exactly the quantity with which we began. Absolutely 
none has been destroyed as none has been produced. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 15 



The Vital Force 



But with the vital force, or what seems to be the force 
employed and manifested in the reproduction of living 
forms, the case is apparently different. An acorn planted 
in the earth grows into a great oak, and year after year, 
often it may be for centuries, this oak will bear hundreds 
of thousands of acorns each identical in every material 
respect, with that from which it was itself produced. 
Each of these in turn may produce other oaks, the exact 
counterpart of the parent tree, until in this way countless 
millions of such trees will have been brought into existence, 
every one identical, as relates to the quantity and character 
of its vital energy, with the original or parent oak. 

Countless millions of tons of matter have here been 
arranged into the form or likeness of trees, apparently in 
opposition to the force of gravity and certainly in opposi- 
tion to, and in defiance of the ordinary laws of decay. The 
same is true of any form of organic life whatever, that may 
be chosen for experiment or observation. 

The case as here set forth, would have its parallel in that 
of a railway engine loaded with all the cars it could draw, 
which could yet move on with undiminished speed and 
ease, if there were attached to every car of its train, on a 
parallel track, a new train, and still an additional train 
attached to every car of each of these trains, and so on 
unendingly. Or if an eddy set up by the motion of a 
finger in the sea should start up a circle of eddies around 
itself, and each of these set up a circle of eddies beyond, 
until the entire ocean should come to consist of a mass of 
eddies, all derived from the energy springing from the 
first, there would be presented an exact parallel of what 
seemingly occurs in the progress of reproduction among 
organic forms. 



16 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

It will be shown later that the concurrence of other 
elements is indispensable to the accomplishment of the 
results observed in reproduction. But insofar as 
appears on the surface of things, and in line with 
current teaching, reproduction is the one feature 
in which organic things differ from inorganic. As far as 
the life principle is concerned, it may be truly said, "No 
man can tell the difference between the spirit of man that 
goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth down- 
ward toward the earth;" nor for that matter between the 
spirit of man and that of the plants of the field or the trees 
of the forest. 

Common Notions of the Soul 

We may as well dismiss at the threshold of our investi- 
gation, all such notions of the soul as are derived from 
tradition or reports of visions of ghosts or spirits that men 
have so often claimed to have experienced. The preva- 
lent conception of the soul or spirit arose among men, no 
doubt, at a period so early that the race had not yet 
learned to make a distinction between dreams and reality. 
A man lost a kinsman or a friend, to whom he had been 
attached in life and who after death appeared to him in 
his dreams. He very naturally concluded that the dead 
person continued to live, since he still saw him and may 
be conversed with him in his sleep. Out of dreams and 
myth, illusion and imposture, have doubtess arisen all 
existing stories of ghosts, spirits, or visible souls. 

With a little alteration of the text, we might borrow a 
declaration supposed to be inspired and say "No man hath 
seen a spirit at any time." Nearly, if not quite all the 
spirits supposed to have been seen in the past, have appear- 
ed in periods of ignorance and to ignorant or very impress- 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 17 

ionable people. They appeared as a rule, clothed in dress 
appropriate to the season, the fashion, and the age, and 
they commonly traveled by such conveyances as were in 
vogue among the living. If such visions prove the exist- 
ence and appearance of the disembodied souls of men, 
they certainly also prove the same for clothes and wagons 
and horses and other equipments and means of convey- 
ance. 

If we are to base our notions of the nature and appear- 
ance of souls, on the reputed popular observations of the 
past, we are required to believe that the souls of men, 
weary of looking after the welfare of the bodies to which 
they are attached in earthly life, cast off these bodies, and 
then loading themselves with clothes which they change 
according to the requirements of the weather, the season 
and the prevailing fashion, and encumbering themselves 
with various clumsy conveyances or the spirits of such 
conveyances, wander about aimlessly over the earth mani- 
festing themselves here and there capriciously to a favored 
and interested few. Indeed the very word "soul" as 
hitherto understood, might be eliminated from history 
and tradition as well without involving the loss of a single 
authentic intelligible fact. 

Soul, the Agent or Active Principle of Repro- 
duction 

If the term soul is to be retained as a biologic entity, or 
as a designation of one, it would appear to be more appli- 
cable to that principle of force or form of energy, that 
guides and determines the reproduction of living beings. 
It is only in such a principle that we may discern an office 
for the soul or the working principle of life. Nor is it 
easy to conceive any possible process of reasoning that 



18 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

will give man a soul, which will not at the same time 
accord a soul to every living thing whether animal or 
plant. 

That which is commonly understood and designated 
as the mind, in so far as this may in the present state of 
knowledge, be surveyed and comprehended, presents itself 
as simply a function, a mere incident of the play of the 
vital forces, possibly operating through a basic structure 
of refined corpuscular elements present in the cells of the 
nervous system; a mere incident of the activities of the 
soul or vital principle eliciting psychic manifestations 
on the one hand, and effecting the building up and main- 
taining of the physical form on the other. Mind and 
body are twin structures, and may be regarded alike as 
products of the workmanship of the soul or active vital 
principle, and no more identical with such principle than 
the flesh of the fruit or the tissue of the leaf, is identical 
with the subtle essence that determines the reproduction 
of the tree after its kind. 

It is obvious then, that if there is a distinctive determin- 
ing principle of life in every plant and in every animal, or 
even in every human being, if we so restrict it, differing 
permanently in its characteristics from the universal 
energy, that principle or force must be of universal 
extent, or else must be capable of unlimited division 
while each of the resulting parts after the division, remains 
equal in magnitude and power to the original whole. 

On the other hand if the vital force or energy which is 
engaged or employed in the production of vital manifest- 
tations, and especially in the office of reproduction, is 
a modified form of the common force or energy, it appears 
to be in many respects unlike any other form of that 
energy with which we have any acquaintance. 

If, as first supposed, the vital force or energy is of a 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 19 

nature essentially different from the common force, that 
is to say, if it is a separate and distinct form of energy, 
then we are compelled to assume that there is about us in 
the natural world, an unlimited store of this peculiar vital 
energy out of which souls or vital units may be formed. 
In that case, the vital spark that animates each individ- 
ual being must be only a particle or corpuscle with its 
attendant force, or a group of such, or it may be an elec- 
tron or an assemblage of such elements drawn from a 
veritable ocean of life. 

Let us for illustration, in deference to the views of those 
who profess to believe that man alone is possessed of a soul, 
consider the case of a single pair. In tracing the line of 
descendants of such a pair, we soon find ourselves at a 
loss to conceive how it possibly can be that the individ- 
uals of even the second generation, could by inheritance 
become possessed of a soul the exact counterpart of the 
souls of their parents. Nor would it be possible to con- 
ceive whence could have been derived the substance or 
essence to endow even one of such individuals while the 
parent still lived, if at the beginning the only available 
soul-stuff was that of the original pair. 

Let us assume, for example, that the male of each gene- 
ration should be the father of ten children, out of possible 
thousands. The first of such a line, after no great length 
of time, would have millions of descendants soon ripening 
into billions, each and every one endowed with a soul 
exactly as the original had been. The results are the same 
when we consider the case of the woman instead of the 
man, except that the possible number of offspring is more 
limited. That is to say, the original soul or pair of souls 
must have been divided again and again into millions and 
billions of parts, each in every way equal to the original 
whole; and this too, while leaving the ancestral endowment 



20 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

undiminished,untouched and unimpaired in its integrity. 
Whoever can convince himself of this, is safe from every 
assault of logic, science, or philosophy. 

Resume' of Argument 

As a resume then of the argument, it appears that we are 
restricted to one of three alternatives in accounting for the 
origin of souls, or whatever the segregated portion of 
vital energy in each individual may be denominated. 

First: It may be assumed that the entity called the 
soul is something created for each individual that comes 
into existence; or that it is specially created for each human 
being at least, if we are willing to concede that souls are 
restricted to human beings. 

Second: The vital energy or soul may be regarded as 
but a transformation of the energy common in the natural 
world, and not differing from the common energy in any 
essential or material characteristic. 

Third: It may be assumed that there exists in the 
natural world, possibly pervading all space, a vast or 
limitless store of a special or peculiar energy out of which 
souls or vital entities are formed, or from which the indi- 
vidual soul unit is segregated at the moment of fecundation. 

As to the first assumption, namely : that a soul is special- 
ly created for each individual about to enter into life, this 
must be left to those who deem it worthy of a moment of 
serious attention. 

The second suggestion, namely : that the vital energy or 
soul is but a transformation of the common energy of 
nature, and differing from it in no essential feature, appeals 
much more forcibly to reason. We cannot yet say what 
modifications are possible to the common force. For all 
that we know with certainty, it may be that the common 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 21 

force can be transformed into what is known as the vital 
force or vital energy. It is well known that vital manifes- 
tations are dependent on heat and chemical affinity, and 
most probably on electricity also, for in the absence of any 
of these life ceases at once and completely. 

We might then infer that the vital force and the common 
force have a meeting point where one passes over into and 
is merged with the other; otherwise there would arise a 
probability that the one could not influence the other. 
This is the case with the various modes of common force 
in which one form affects another simply by being trans- 
formed into it. But if we attempt to carry out the analogy 
and seek to ascertain whether the force which controls 
matter is transformed into matter, or whether matter 
whose motions produce the known manifestations of force, 
can be resolved into force, the analogy fails in so far as we 
are able to perceive. Yet force or energy and matter may 
ultimately prove to be one. 

The vital force then might possibly be a form of force, 
different from the common force, and still be ministered 
to by it, and in a measure controlled by it, if we may draw 
an analogy from the interactions of force and matter. 

We have already considered the possibility that a pecu- 
liar soul energy or vital energy constituting the endow- 
ment of an original pair, might be divided and redivided, 
unendingly, to furnish a soul for each of the descendants 
of that pair; and found that this is unthinkable and im- 
possible, in view of the accepted notions of the persistence 
or conservation of energy. 

If the vital energy is not a form of the common energy, 
but wholly distinct from it, there must be a limitless 
reserve of it in nature, which may be drawn upon as it is 
required by or for each individual coming into existence. 

Or as already indicated, the peculiarity of elementary 



22 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

conditions which confers the power of giving rise to living 
forms, may be due to certain atoms or corpuscles, different 
in size and character from any yet disco vered,which togeth- 
er with the forces connected with them constitute the basis 
of vital manifestations. In this case, that is, in the case 
of the existence of vital atoms or corpuscles, the common 
forms of energy might suffice for vital manifestations, and 
all peculiarly vital phenoma might be determined by the 
interactions of the common energy operating from or 
through such peculiar atoms or corpuscles. 

An Ocean of Life 

The earth, then, is in every likelihood immersed in an 
ocean of vital energy, if indeed the universe is not filled 
with it, possibly differing only in form from the ordinary 
manifestations of the common force, and most likely 
linked with atomic forms of a refined nature which are as 
yet unappreciated. 

It is the degradation of this energy or a partial effectuation 
of its tendencies, that supplies the power or force for the 
production of all living forms. The elements surrounding 
us are apt and ripe for the bringing forth of endless kinds 
and numbers of living forms; tending and seeking to do so, 
and only waiting to be directed by a guide, which is 
supplied in the energy of the germ plasm, to begin shaping 
themselves into new individuals. 

No infinite division of the life principle of a prime vaI 
ancestor need be invoked. The appropriate elements are 
ever and everywhere abundantly at hand in the natural 
world. As the Hindoos long ago taught, one soul sets up 
another, life sets up life, out of these elements as one lamp 
lights up another, and this without diminution of its own 
flame. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 23 



Is All Life One? 

Assuming then that there is in nature a peculiar vital 
energy, whether it is grafted on the common energy or is a 
modification of it, has this energy a separate form for each 
grade of life, or does there exist only one principle of life 
which is in some way modified for each kind of living organ- 
ism, or even for each individual? 

A study of the various forms in which life presents itself 
leads almost inevitably to the conclusion that there exists 
a close relationship if not a substantial identity, between 
the life principle in man and that of all lower forms of 
beings whether animal or vegetable. 

The respects in which they all respond to modifying 
influences are exceedingly numerous. In the process of 
growth, all organic forms appropriate and utilize practi- 
cally the same chemical elements; and especially is this 
true of such products as may be devoted to the nutrition, 
either of the parent itself or its off-spring. The food of 
man in so far as it is derived from the vegetable kingdom, 
is almost wholly the pabulum laid up for the young 
vegetable by its parent form. Life in both plants and 
animals prevents disintegrating chemical processes, and 
affords in a marked degree protection from decay. Thus 
a tree may continue to grow for centuries, resisting decay 
even at the heart where no cells capable of destroying 
microbian forms may have existed for ages; yet as soon as 
it has been deprived of life, it may at once under conditions 
otherwise unchanged, begin rapidly to decay. 

Vegetable as well as animal organisms possess the power 
of reacting against a multitude of injuries of various kinds, 
and in a specific way against injuries inflicted by the 
action of various lowly forms of life. In this respect 



24 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

they notably resemble each other. When the germs of 
various diseases, such as measles, scarlet fever, anthrax, 
and the like, invade the bodies of animals capable of re- 
acting against them, they arouse on the part of the or- 
ganism, a special defensive process or special form of erup- 
tion, different for different classes of infecting germs, but 
constant for each one and the particular disease to which 
it gives rise. 

So among plants, during the season of growth, there may 
be observed a great variety of reactions against the injur- 
ies inflicted by individuals of many kinds of insects or 
by other hostile agencies. In one case it may be a vinegar 
ball that will be produced, rich in acetic acid. Around the 
egg or the sting- wound of another insect will be developed 
a nutgall charged with tannin. In still another case, a 
wounded branch or leaf will respond or react with a puff- 
ball ; and so on until a great variety of such excresences are 
produced. But in every instance a definite kind of growth 
will take place in response to each particular kind of injury. 
It has been discovered also that the plant, like the animal, 
reacts against gross injuries in a way that suggests some- 
thing more than an accidental correspondence. Thus in 
the neighborhood of wounds, a more vigorous growth will 
take place than is met with elsewhere. Likewise, the 
material employed in the repair of injuries in both animals 
and plants is of an exceptionally low order of vitality; 
connective or scar-tissue being employed by nature for 
such purposes in both classes of organisms. Like animals, 
vegetables maintain a temperature above that of the 
surrounding atmosphere or other environment, and this 
even in the winter season when they are dormant. And 
strange to relate, a tree or plant and its fruit as well, when 
wounded suffers a real inflammation with rise of tempera- 
ture. They have truly a fever. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 25 

Species of plants are known that entrap insects and use 
them for food, secreting a kind of gastric juice, and in the 
truest sense digesting their victims. Indeed, in man, as in 
all other animals, the final work of digestion is accomplished 
by the leucocytes which are closely related to the proto- 
plasm in the cell-structures of plants. 

The protein compounds in vegetable organisms are 
practically identical with the same elements in animals; 
and the frame-work or skeleton in both classes of organ- 
isms the feature in respect of which they mostly differ, is 
yet a secretion, or excretion, if it may be so called, 
effected by the albuminoid protoplasm in each. 

Reproduction in both is accomplished in a way that is 
substantially identical. Parthenogenesis, or virgin birth, 
represented by fission, which is general and even exclusive 
in the lowest forms of plants, extends up to the lower 
animals and even has its counterpart in man, where its 
attempt by nature often results in the production of der- 
moid cysts and tumors. But for the most part in both the 
animal and vegetable kingdoms, reproduction is effected 
by the union of a male and female element. In the flowers 
of many plants, the male and female organs seem often to 
make intelligently directed efforts to meet each other in 
the fulfillment of their functions. 

The power of transforming inorganic into organic mate- 
rial is in the main a function of vegetable activity, buu one 
that is also possessed by the lower orders of animals. 
Indeed, vegetable and animal life are so linked together 
by intermediate transitional forms, and the two have so 
many properties and functions in common, that it is 
concededly impossible to tell where the one leaves off and 
the other begins. Sensibility is a characteristic of all 
animals, but to a certain extent it is possessed by plants 
also, and the conviction that plants possess a species of 



26 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

intelligence, not to say consciousness and even conscience, 
has been given a constantly growing, if even qualified 
recognition among independent thinkers and observers. 

There are indeed many activities in plant life that can- 
not be satisfactorily explained except on the assumption 
of a principle of intelligence, and a principle too that is 
ever present in its operation. A wild pea vine, whose 
ancestors for untold generations have been climbing trees 
by means of tendrils, if compelled to support itself on the 
face of a smooth stone wall which its tendrils cannot 
grasp, will enlarge the tips of its tendrils into suckers and 
by their help cling to the smooth hard surface for support. 

Innumerable other examples drawn from observations 
of plant life might be offered, all going to show that a 
certain logical adaptability is inherent everywhere in 
vital processes. If then there exists in nature a peculiar 
vital energy, an energy that differs essentially from the 
common energy and constitutes a special and separate 
soul-stuff, it is possibly one and the same for all things that 
multiply and reproduce after their kind. 

This vital principle or soul-stuff, as we shall see later on, 
must either be modified for each separate individual or 
species that comes into existence, or else there must exist 
in nature a vast quantity and variety of vital corpuscles 
whose attendant force is the vital force and which are 
sufficient to meet the requirements of every form and 
character of living thing that ever has existed or ever will 
exist. And if these vital corpuscular elements extend 
throughout the universe as is most probable, it follows that 
forms of life and various vital phenomena, are substan- 
tially the same in every inhabited world of the universe. 
Having endeavored to set forth in an intelligible way, 
the author's conception of what might be designated the 
vital force or soul principle or element, and some features 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 27 

of its manifestations in different forms of living things, we 
may now return to a more direct discussion of the nature 
of mind. 

The Nature of Mind 

By the great majority of philosophers, and more par- 
ticularly those of former ages, mind has been regarded as 
an entity separate and distinct from the body; and by 
many as equally separate and distinct from the soul. 
Indeed the expression "soul, mind, and body" has been 
widely used as a term necessary to be employed in order 
to embrace and designate the entire being; the body being 
meantime, regarded as the mere temporary, perishable 
home of the mind and soul which are regarded as sep- 
arable and immortal entities. 

We may select then, for that inspiring entity, the vital 
force which presides over reproduction, and directs the 
building up of each new being after certain definite, logical 
and orderly patterns, and which when rightly played upon 
by the common force or energy of nature, or it may be 
when rightly ministered to in such a way, gives out the 
phenomena we call mental, in the same orderly manner 
that it builds up the bodily structure of the individual. 

It has been poetically said that "Flowers are the 
thoughts of God." But in accordance with the view here 
presented, it may be said that all organic forms and all 
definite inorganic forms as well, are thought-forms. As 
truly are they such as are ideas, judgments, memories or 
any other products of so-called mental activity. They all 
result from the tendencies or direction of movement or 
directive action inherent in the corpuscles that are the 
primary basis of life. 

The highest and most perfect examples of soul-work 



28 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

in the realm of mind are produced outside the domain of 
consciousness. Such are the productions of genius which 
in accordance with its wont leaps to conclusions, and often 
conceives the outcome of its work while yet the inspired 
steps that lead to it are hid away in the subconscious. 
Indeed its creations are often effectually developed before 
they appear on the threshold of consciousness and are even 
practically complete before consciousness has the oppor- 
tunity of passing upon them. 

To the genius himself, the inspiration to such work often 
seems to come from without, and even to spring with sur- 
prising suddenness from a higher power. If we but close- 
ly observe we shall find that the great mass of our thoughts 
well up into consciousness already largely fashioned; 
spring up from the secret chambers of the brain as plants 
out of the ground, or as buds unfold out of the darkness 
into the welcoming sunlight. 

"Some Milton pregnant with poetic fire," was an apt 
and happy characterization borrowed from the language 
of a poet and a seer, and employed in the description of a 
genius with its unfoldings still in the hands of destiny. 
For Milton like many another tabernacle of genius felt 
the quickening of the child of his brain long ere he knew 
what it was to be, in either form or feature; even as the 
mother yet to be is wont to feel the quickening of her 
still unborn. 

Thoughts and Things 

The correspondence or resemblance so often manifested 
between thoughts or ideas and organic forms, already 
alluded to, finds its ready counterpart in the relation of 
resemblance of thought forms to inorganic things as well. 
We may perceive in the shape and structure often assumed 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 29 

by inorganic substances, something like the same logic 
of arrangement and the same orderly sequence of develop- 
ment in the resultant groupings, when inorganic elements 
are responding to the action of the various modifications 
of the common force or energy, as is observed when the 
vital force is effecting the production of living things and 
developing their functions. And what is more remarkable 
still, these forms and groupings almost invariably take 
pattern and coloring that are agreeable to human tastes. 

The well-known example of the formation of elaborate 
and flower-like figures effected by placing dust particles on 
a tense membrane, and then causing this membrane to 
vibrate by means of musical notes is a case well in point. 
The photography of sound waves supplies numerous 
instances. Every one has observed with what marvelous 
variety and beauty frost flowers form on window panes, 
when the weather is cold and the air charged with vap- 
or, while few objects are to be met with more attractive 
to the eye than the elaborate mosaics brought out in the 
surface of the ground while freezing. 

Among "the treasures of the snow" is an infinite variety 
of forms, all strikingly beautiful to the human eye. To 
these might be added any number of similar examples, in 
all of which the harmony seems as complete and the 
symmetry as apt as if the figures were intelligently and 
purposely designed for the gratification of human taste; 
or as if man's sense of beauty, harmony, and comeliness 
had been expressly created for the appreciation of things 
as they are. 

It has been demonstrated by Professor Goldschmidt, 
the eminent crystallographer of Heidelberg, that the 
arrangement of notes and the blending of tones and over- 
tones in music are subject to the same laws that crystals 
observe in the arrangement of their facets and angles. 



30 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

km 
Through this interesting^discovery he was enabled to 
accomplish the analysis of many high class and compli- 
cated musical compositions in which analysis had hitherto 
been found unattainable. 

The lesson to be drawn from these interesting facts is 
that there runs through all nature, a tendency to the for- 
mation of definite and orderly groupings of the particles 
of matter, and that the forms of these groupings indicate the 
tendencies or the directions of the force that moves them 
and places them in position. Such facts also teach that the 
workings of our minds are subject to the same laws that 
govern material forms, and that such forms and groupings 
find in our minds a response and approval that go to show 
that the laws of thought and those of the tendencies of 
vital or soul force, as well as the common or natural forces, 
are alike in their essential nature. 

The flower and the shell, the mosaic of the frost, and the 
myriad-formed crystals of the snow, the soul-stirring 
symphony and all other objects of their class, appear to 
our minds to be beautiful, because they are developed on a 
plan that finds a ready response in our mental constitu- 
tion. They are such as we should create them, had we 
creative powers and the ability to surrender ourselves 
fully to the guidance of the light that ever streams from 
the chandelier of nature; they are the handiwork of perfect 
genius. 

Objects appeal to us as being beautiful because the ideas, 
thoughts and feelings they arouse or elicit are akin to the 
thing; because the thoughts, the feelings, and the things 
are alike the product of kindred forces, are governed by 
common laws, and are cast in eternal kindred molds. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 31 



A Special Vital Corpuscle 

Is there in nature a special and peculiar atom or cor- 
puscle with which the vital force is connected or involved, 
or is the vital force connected or associated with the ordi- 
narily recognized coarse atom or molecule, and a manifes- 
tation of one or more of the forms of its atomic or molecu- 
lar activity? 

Of the essential nature of energy we know nothing. It 
is only in its manifestations, only in some character of 
motion, that we can in any degree comprehend it. Fur- 
thermore, its manifestations can all be traced back to 
motion in some form of ponderable material substance. 
Nor does it halt or rest when once set in motion in the form 
of ether waves until it impinges on or collides with some 
other such ponderable material elements. We may there- 
fore safely maintain that the primal manifestation of 
energy is in the vibration of some form of ponderable atoms 
or corpuscles, even though at the present time science 
is tracing these bodies themselves to that refined condition 
in which matter and energy become one. The conditions 
of organic life, however, do not seem to be fully satisfied, 
as before indicated, except on the supposition that there 
exists in nature a vast store of a peculiar class of refined 
particles which might be denominated vital atoms or 
corpuscles and whose associated force might be denominat- 
ed vital force or soul-stuff. 

Sex Among Corpuscles 

When we consider the constant proportion and the 
practical equality existing in the number of individuals of 
the different sexes among animals and plants, in all ages 



32 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

and in all countries, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion 
that the refined atoms here assumed and their associated 
force are endowed with sexual characteristics: that is to 
say, endowed with tendencies which enable them when 
entering into the formation of new individuals to direct 
and determine the development of one or other of the 
sexes. If it could be established that there exists in nature 
a practically unlimited store of vital atoms or corpuscles 
in equal number, male and female, and that in order to be 
able to unite or combine and form a new individual, these 
corpuscles must combine in unequal numbers, that the 
majority in each combining group determines the sex, so 
that when the majority in a particular combination hap- 
pens to be male, the resulting individual will be male, but 
that in such individual the female atoms constituting 
the minority will produce the female rudimentary organs 
found in the male, that when the majority happens to be 
female, the resulting individual will be female, but that 
the male minority in it will produce the rudimentary 
male organs, we should have at the same time an explana- 
tion of the virtual equality of the two sexes as regards 
numbers and of the presence in both sexes, of crossed rud- 
imentary structures. 

Thus when a male should be produced, there would be a 
disturbance of the balance of forces in the life-giving elem- 
ents of nature, and the chances in the next turn would 
favor the production of a female; and conversely when a 
female should have been produced. If, in some instances, 
as in the case of hemp among plants and bees among insects 
for example, one or the other sex is found greatly to 
predominate in number, it might be suspected that 
there had been to a greater or less extent a failure of 
fecundation on the part of the sex thus deficient or a defect 
in some other of the steps of reproduction. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 



Is All Expression of Energy Vibratory? 

In order to establish the probability of the contention 
that mental and other psychical activities, and the activi- 
ties resulting in physical forms as well, are uniformly 
vibratory in character, it is of the greatest importance to 
demonstrate that vibrations either manifest or implicit, 
constitute all the known forms of the manifestation or 
expression of energy. 

Force has been defined as the tendency of energy to 
transform itself, and also more simply, as that which pro- 
duces motion or pressure. The rule for the employment 
of the terms, force and energy, has for some time, among 
scientific authorities, been undergoing a change, the tend- 
ency being to narrow the scope of meaning of the term, 
force. There is still, however, more or less confusion in 
the popular mind as to the employment of these terms. 
But employing the term force as expressing a manifesta- 
tion of energy, it is now universally regarded as embracing 
every mode of motion. 

By the most advanced thinkers, all energy is now regard- 
ed as one and the same thing in the final analysis, and all 
manifestations of the common energy, that is to say, all 
forms of force axe held to be interchangeable. Further- 
more, it is not unreasonable to contend that while energy 
is in its essence inconceivable, all of its known manifesta- 
tions may ultimately be resolved into vibrations. 

On the first presentation of the theory whose develop- 
ment is here attempted, now more than forty years ago, 
the author reached the conclusion that all force is either 
actually vibratory or else resolvable into vibrations. This 
conclusion was based upon two considerations. The 
first consideration was that of the necessity of vibration as 



34 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

a result of the equality of action and reaction; and the 
other was based upon the fact that forms of force known 
to be vibratory can be changed into forms apparently not 
vibratory; and conversely, that forms of force not 
yet ascertained to be vibratory can be transformed into 
others that are wholly vibratory. 

Long pondering of the first consideration has not in- 
creased the appreciation of its forcefulness, while the 
second grows stronger the more it is investigated and 
considered. Since forms of force or modes of motion in 
which it is difficult or apparently impossible to trace vibra- 
tions, are found invariably changeable into others that are 
distinctly vibratory, it is a most reasonable conclusion 
that the vibrations existed potentially at least, in the force 
to be translated, before the translation was effected. 

On the contrary, when a form of force that is wholly vi- 
bratory is changed into one in which all evidence or appear- 
ance of vibration is seemingly lost, it is difficult to resist 
the conclusion that the vibrations still exist somehow 
involved or implicated in the new mode of motion, especi- 
ally when this can be again changed into the vibratory 
form. 

Thus a cannon ball moving through the air, or a planet 
moving through space does not in the least suggest vibra- 
tion. But let either experience a resistance that shall 
entirely arrest its progress, and the mass motion is all at 
once and completely transformed into molecular motion: 
that is, into heat, light, or some other form of energy that 
is wholly vibratory. And here too the conclusion is a 
most rational one, that the resulting molecular vibrations 
have been all the time completely involved or implicated 
in the previous mass motion. 

When the powder in a cannon is exploded, the chemical 
energy of its elements, not demonstrably vibratory in that 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 35 

form, takes the form of heat, which by its wide range of 
vibrations drives the particles of the resulting gases apart 
and propels the ball from the cannon and on through space. 

Here the vibrations which constituted the heat have 
become the mass motion of the ball, and are seemingly 
lost or disappear. But when the ball strikes the armor 
of a ship, or other rigid substance, some of its molecules 
are driven too close together, and then springing apart they 
begin swinging back and forth, and thus revive the fine or 
molecular vibrations which had been absorbed into the 
motion of the ball as it was leaving the cannon. There are 
also other parts of the ball at the sides, which are arrested 
before reaching the ship's armor, so that the cohesion of 
the atoms at those points is strained by their momentum 
or tendency to move on; and then being made to spring 
back by cohesive force, they are set to vibrating it may 
be rapidly enough to give off light. 

Or we may conceive a more easily intelligible illustration 
of this transformation of mass motion and the converse. 
Let a dozen billiard balls be suspended as pendulum balls 
in a row, and then set to swinging. At their phase of great- 
est speed let them strike all at once and with a force equal 
to their momentum, a bar which after moving through 
a distance of one foot shall also strike all at once a second 
row of balls of equal weight with the others. On the in- 
stant the first row of balls will come to rest, while the 
second row will be set to vibrating just as the first had 
been, assuming that there was no loss of energy by the pro- 
duction of heat or by rebound in the collision. But the 
bar while moving was seemingly not vibrating, and might 
have gone on so forever. 

Just as the bar takes up the vibrations, and while itself 
apparently not vibrating delivers these vibrations to the 
other balls, so the cannon ball takes up the vibrations due 



36 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

to the explosion of the powder, these vibrations to become 
its mass motion and to be given out again as fine vibrations 
of light or heat, in case of an arresting collision. 

Not all the vibrations, however, of the exploding powder 
are taken up, but only those whose simultaneous excur- 
sions are taking place in the direction of the cannon's 
mouth. The first swing of the atoms in that direction 
becomes the motion of the mass. And in order to become 
the motion of the mass, the vibration of the particles had 
to be arrested when only a single excursion or half a period 
had been completed. The other half of the vibration 
periods would be completed and that in molecular form, 
when the ball should strike the armor of a ship or other 
mass that might arrest its motion, or never if its motion 
was never arrested. In the mass motion of the ball is 
therefore hidden away every heat and every light vibra- 
tion that shall be developed when it is arrested at the 
end of its journey. 

Still another and perhaps more apt illustration of the 
manner in which molecular motion or vibration may be 
transformed into mass motion is offered by the conception 
of a large number of balls fastened together in a bunch by 
means of elastic cords, and all set to vibrating in such a 
way that no ball moves in any direction, without having 
its motion counteracted by that of another ball moving at 
the same time in an opposite direction. 

Under such conditions, if all the balls should move with 
equal force and frequency, the whole mass would remain 
stationary in one position. But if all the balls should begin 
an excursion in the same direction and at the same moment 
of time, the whole mass would move away in the direction 
of such motion with what would be the average speed of all 
the balls, while the individual vibrations of all the balls 
would disappear. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 37 

So if the molecules or atoms of a mass of matter heated 
to a white heat throughout, could all enter upon an excur- 
sion at the same moment of time and in the same direction, 
the mass itself would move away with the speed of light, 
at the same time becoming dark and cold. 

Is Gravitation Vibratory? 

While it may not be quite essential to the validity of the 
theory of the origin of life and form, both of mind and body 
here sought to be established, that gravitation be proved to 
be vibratory, and that gravity is a repulsion and not an 
attraction; it would certainly strengthen a vibratory 
theory of mind and form, if we could establish the proba- 
bility that all other known expression of energy is vibratory. 

In order to sustain a theory of gravity by repulsion, it 
would be necessary to make a number of assumptions, 
some of which might be regarded as violent to a degree. 
These assumptions are: — 

First : That from every existing gravitating atom, there 
are continuously and perpetually radiated into the ether at 
all temperatures, waves or vibrations more rapid and of 
narrower range than any yet perceived; and further that 
these vibrations pass through solid substances as readily as 
or more readily than through the ether. 

Second : That these vibrations are resisted by the ether, 
upon which they exert pressure, and this pressure reacting 
upon the mass that is emitting the vibrations tends to 
push it off in the opposite direction. 

The result of all this would be that if a mass were placed 
anywhere in space, perfectly isolated and stationary, it 
would remain absolutely still in its position, reacting equal- 
ly in every direction against the ether. But if another 
body should be brought into the field of its vibrations, 



38 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

the ether in the space between the two bodies, especially 
along the line passing through their centers and indefinite- 
ly beyond, would be kept in rhythmic vibration by each 
body for the other. The vibrations radiating from such 
bodies on their near sides at all oblique angles would 
consequently meet with less resistance on the part of the 
ether than those radiating in the same manner from the 
opposite or farther sides. 

The result of this would be that the ether in the field 
of the radiations of the nearer sides would be better pre- 
pared for facilitating wave passage than that of the farther 
or more remote sides, and thus the two bodies would be 
driven toward each other by the unequal reaction of their 
near and far sides against the ether. 

Some of the hypotheses here invoked find a colorable 
support in present day science. A German scientist some 
years ago gave out a report detailing a large number of 
experiments carried out by dropping wooden balls into a 
vessel of water. When the balls were of the same size 
and dropped at the same instant into the water, their 
tendency was to move toward each other. But when 
dropped at different times, or when the balls were of differ- 
ent sizes, they tended to move away from each other. 

This would seem to indicate that when the water was 
already in undulation from the action of one ball, the waves 
passing through it from the other met with less resistance 
than the waves passing outward toward the walls of the 
vessel. The reaction impulse being therefore less between 
the balls than between them and the walls, they were 
driven together. It is also said that two tuning forks 
suspended on cords near together and vibrating in unison 
tend to approach each other. 

It is a well-known fact that light and other radiant 
vibrations meet with resistance on entering the ether, and 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 39 

it necessarily results that the impact of such vibrations 
against the ether react against the luminous bodies from 
which they proceed. It follows then that if a sun were 
placed stationary and still in space and one-half of it 
should become cold and dark, leaving the other half 
unchanged, the luminous half would in the course of mil- 
lenniums be found chasing the dark half through the uni- 
verse with something like half the speed of light. 

The impact of sound vibrations has also been proved to 
exert pressure upon the surrounding air, and this pressure 
also has been weighed, and as might have been expected, 
has been found to decrease with the square of the distance 
from the source. This resistance to the impact of sound 
must necessarily react against the object giving it off. 

It is obvious that if a force or pressure is exerted by 
radiating vibrations, against the ether as they proceed 
outward, an equal pressure of reaction must be exerted 
upon the body that gives off the radiations. In the case 
of gravity vibrations the proportion of radiation would be 
vastly greater than in the case of light, and the reaction 
would be correspondingly greater, for under the hypotheses 
every atom of a mass gives off gravity vibrations which 
pass through the whole mass without hindrance; whereas 
only the surface of bodies can give off light vibrations. 

But the most violent hypothesis connected with such a 
theory is that matter at all temperatures is constantly 
giving off the exceeding short and rapid vibrations that 
the gravity vibrations are supposed to be. Formerly this 
seemed to be a fatal objection. But the discovery of 
radium and the fact of its giving off various kinds of 
vibrations at the very lowest known temperatures, has 
furnished an example that affords at least the suggestion 
of an analogy that adds something to the probability of 
the contention here made. But the greatest difficulty 



40 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

is the one that attends every attempt to conceive the 
source of gravitational energy. Whence is the energy 
supplied that is eternally and seemingly inexhaustibly 
dispensed by gravitation, this mother of all the force 
manifestations in the universe? 

As said before, we have as yet no hint of any method or 
process by which energy can be exalted; or by which dis- 
sipated heat and other degraded forms of energy can be 
again elevated to the grade of gravitational energy from 
which they originally sprang, and thus the cycle be com- 
pleted. Gravity is transformable into all other forms of 
the natural or common force, and is continuously being 
drawn upon, throughout the universe, to produce them; 
therefore they must somewhere, sometime and in some 
way be transformed again into the energy of gravity. Can 
it be that such a process is in some way related to the prin- 
ciple that inertia increases at a greater rate than speed, 
and that this applies to the speed of waves traversing 
the ether? Or is the process based on some as yet un- 
known property of the ether waves? 

It may not be indispensable to a theory of life and form 
based on vibration that gravitation together with all other 
manifestations of energy should be proven vibratory, but 
a demonstration of that character would vastly streng- 
then such a theory. 

The chief aim in the foregoing investigation into the 
nature of energy and force has been to lead up to a just 
understanding of the characteristics and extent of vibra- 
tory or undulatory motion, and that with the special view 
of showing either directly or by analogy that all manifes- 
tations of energy as related to life and form are either 
actually or potentially vibratory; for it is on this assump- 
tion that it is here proposed to base some of the most 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 41 

involved, most intricate and most important of all the 
problems of mind. 

Softening of Waves by Time and Distance 

There remains, however, a further and most important 
assumption to be established, namely, that it is character- 
istic of all forms of undulatory or vibratory motion that 
with time and distance they increase in amplitude while 
they diminish in intensity; or at all events that by reason 
of diffusion or some other means, a progressive mildness, 
softness, or gentleness is impressed upon the undulations 
of radiant energy, and all other waves, as well, by lapse of 
time or the traversing of space. 

The increasing length and the diminishing violence of 
the waves of water, as they travel from their exciting cause, 
is easy to observe on any considerable body of that liquid 
when its surface is disturbed. The observer of a passing 
steamer will perceive that just behind the wheels the 
waves run high with sharp crests, and that they follow 
each other closely. As they recede farther from the boat 
or are left behind they become longer and slower, and before 
finally disappearing, they are changed into gentle swells 
with their crests widely separated. 

A similar condition has been found to obtain with the 
tremors or shocks of earthquakes. Near the locality of 
disturbance the vibrations are found to be rapid, tumul- 
tuous, violent, and discordant; but farther away they 
become more regular, fewer for a given time, more harmon- 
ious and greatly softened in their intensity. But while in 
the case of waves of water and earthquake tremors the 
increase in horizontal amplitude is easily observed to keep 
pace with diminution in intensity, this is not so easily 
made out in the case of waves of sound. 



42 VIBRATION AND LIFE 



Softening of Sound Waves 

As in the case of light, the wave length of sound, it is 
claimed by most authorities, is neither increased nor 
diminished by length of travel, since the pitch which 
depends on the vibration frequency remains the same 
whatever the distance at which the sound may be heard. 
That is, the distance over which a sound wave will pass in 
a given time is held to be constant for the same medium 
at the same temperature. 

However there are those that hold that pitch is lowered 
with distance, which, if true, would indicate that a part 
of the waves of sound are merged during its progress. In 
large caves returning echoes have been observed to be of a 
distinctly lower pitch than the primary sound, a parallel 
to which is found in the case of reflected light. 

In the case of sound waves, we are taught that the long 
vibrations travel faster than the short ones, so that a loud 
sound which consists of long vibrations, will travel faster 
than a low one which consists of short vibrations. So 
much is this the case that in polar regions, the report of a 
gun may be heard by a distant listener, and after that the 
command of the officer to fire. The length of sound waves 
is also diminished while passing from a rarer medium into a 
denser one. 

But in all this we have found no certain criterion by 
which we may form a definite estimate of the distance a 
sound wave may have traveled before reaching our ears. 
What then can there be in the behavior of sound that 
enables us to judge whether it comes from a point nearby 
or one that is farther away? If sound waves do not grow 
longer and milder with distance traveled, if there is not a 
progressive diminution of intensity, it might yet be that 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 43 

there is a change in the quality of sound that to some extent 
indicates the stages of its journey. 

Quality is the name given to the impression made on the 
ear by a sound with regard to its various degrees of com- 
plexity. And, as already indicated, there is no doubt 
that sound waves become less complex and more orderly 
and harmonious with distance, as do earthquake vibrations 
and other like tremors. This goes to prove that, in these 
cases at least, quality bears a relation to distance of travel. 

Again, alterations of pressure or impact of the sound 
wave diminishing with the distance traveled may be the 
factor sought, or at least may contribute to the effect. 
Recently delicate balances have been constructed for 
weighing the force of the impact of the waves of sound after 
the pattern of Tyndall's balances for weighing the force of 
the impact of light. In this way it has been ascertained 
that the sound impact decreases with distance, and its 
force is probably inversely as the square of the distance. 
This progressively diminishing force of impact might be 
of service in efforts at discerning the distance traveled by 
the sound, if only we had a correct notion of the strength 
of the sound when it started. This would be somewhat 
analogous to perspective in vision. 

But whatever the view that now may be held, or what- 
ever future investigations may reveal, every one knows that 
there is a peculiar quality to sound that enables him to 
form some notion, for the most part a fairly correct one, of 
the distance a sound has traveled before reaching his ear. 
Furthermore, this peculiar quality can to a certain extent 
be voluntarily imitated, so that the sound of the voice may 
be made to seem to have come from a much greater 
distance than is actually the case. 

One who has listened to the hunter's horn or the baying 
of the hounds in the chase, is aware that independently of 



44 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

any lengthening or shortening of the waves of sound that 
may be due to the approach or recession of its cause, he 
can form a fairly correct judgment as to whether the chase 
approaches or moves farther away. Likewise in hearing 
of the battlefield, where each gun contributes its share of 
the noise almost instantaneously, and the length of the 
wave is therefore unaffected by any movement of the gun 
while the sound is in the making, the listener may easily, 
from his distant station, perceive who it is that advances 
and who retreats; where rests the promise of victory and 
where the omen of defeat. 

Softening of Light Waves 

A theory of mind and form based on vibration would 
seem however to depend mostly on the behavior of the 
waves of light, and it must be confessed that this support 
is far from being strong enough to force conviction on 
unwilling minds. 

Waves of light in some respects resemble those of water 
in that they are transverse, and that they both consist 
of a portion raised above the normal level and called a 
crest, and a portion depressed below it, called the trough. 
They resemble sound waves in that both are supposed to 
travel indefinitely with the same wave-length and fre- 
quency through a medium of uniform density. 

But while the speed of the waves of sound vary with the 
wave-length, the speed in vacuo of all light waves is 
believed to be the same regardless of the wave-length. If 
this were not so, in as much as light of different wave- 
lengths is different in color, an eclipsed body, one of the 
satelites of Jupiter, for example, on reappearing from be- 
hind a planet after an eclipse would be seen first of the 
color which travels fastest, the others subsequently 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 45 

appearing. Nothing of this sort having been observed, 
the inference is that all light waves have the same speed 
whatever their length. 

If the waves of light traversing the ether should increase 
steadily in length and decrease in rapidity, so that violet 
should become orange in the course of its journey, and 
ultimately red, then the remotest visible stars should all 
appear red; for this is the color through which they all 
must pass, being the last one they exhibit before disap- 
pearing from vision. 

The light, therefore, that left the remotest stars, it may 
be thousands of years ago, as infra red, the slowest of the 
ether waves the eye can perceive, has all this time, it 
would seem, been traveling with a vibration frequency of 
395 million millions per second. Likewise the violet, the 
most rapid that can impress the eye as light, has all that 
time kept the pace of 760 million millions per second. Is 
there then no length of journey in all infinity, the end of 
which the waves of light reach travel-worn? Without the 
least slackening of their pace do they go on and on forever? 
Through the pure ether, yes, as far as we yet can know. 

But when entangled with ponderable matter there come 
often and under many conditions changes in the waves of 
light; and these changes are perhaps in all cases a trans- 
forming or combining of shorter waves into longer ones. 
Thus the ultra violet waves which traverse the ether of 
space with a vibration frequency of 833 million millions 
per second, if made to pass through a solution of quinine 
or kerosene, will emerge as blue or violet having lost a 
large part of their wave frequency. So in passing through 
various other substances waves of this class may emerge 
with still other frequencies; or, yet again, when taken up 
by various phosphorescent substances, they may be given 
out again with the whole category of such waves as affect 



46 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

vision. That is, they reappear as white light, the higher 
frequencies of some of the waves having been acquired 
through the degradation of others. 

It is not impossible, even, that the condition of elevated 
temperature recently ascertained to prevail in the upper 
regions of the air is due to the absorption of the weakened 
rays of light coming from the stars; and certain it is that 
heat and light are so degraded by reflection at the earth's 
surface that they are absorbed by the atmosphere in 
increased proportion. Likewise heat rays from the sun 
will pass directly through glass, but cannot then pass back 
again by radiation after having experienced reflection 
from the surfaces beneath. 

Since the color of light depends upon the wave length, 
which appears not to change with distance of travel, and 
its speed depends upon the constitution of the ether, as is 
proved by the fact that the rate of speed is the same for all 
lengths of wave whether of light, heat or electricity, it 
must be admitted that the view that a change in either of 
these respects comes to the waves of light while journeying 
through the infinite ether, a view that would be most help- 
ful to our contention if shown to be true, is not very strong- 
ly sustained, analogy being its main dependence for 
support. 

It is certain, however, that whether or not the wave of 
light ever varies in either speed or length while journeying 
through the ether, light as it recedes from its source must 
be progressively weakened by diffusion. The energy of 
light like that of gravity must decrease with the square of 
the distance from the luminous body, and the force of the 
impact of light must decrease in a corresponding ratio 
from diffusion alone. And as we have seen, the quality of 
light is greatly affected by reflection. 
And since it is known that waves of water and earth 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 47 

tremors give distinct evidence of the distance they may 
have traveled, and sound waves assume a character that 
is scarcely less indicative, although it equally fails to be 
shown that sounds change their character with any rela- 
tion to the distance they may have traveled, it may possi- 
bly yet be demonstrated that light also comes from far a- 
way sources, with some acquired quality or property that 
enables our judgment, acting it may be all unconsciously, to 
recognize the fact that it is travel-worn, and to form a 
dim estimate of the distance it has traveled. 

Yet even if this is not the case, even if the pace of light 
through the pure ether is forever the same, there yet re- 
mains the possibility that in traversing the atmosphere, 
either primarily or after being reflected back from the 
earth's surface, it may take on a character akin to the wa- 
ter wave, or the sound effect. And it is more than possible 
that if we had a power of perception for light as much more 
refined than that which we have for sound, as light itself is 
more refined than sound, we might readily perceive an alt- 
ered behavior due to the modifying effect of distance or 
length of travel. 

And after all it is not absolutely essential to the validity 
of the argument to prove that radiant vibrations do in 
fact increase in gentleness and softness as they journey 
through space. This, however, would make more probable 
the assumption that memory consists of vibrations, and 
that memory waves decrease in intensity with time and 
that they differ among themselves in intensity and ampli- 
tude at any given moment. 

If this be true of memory waves- — it they do in fact differ 
among themselves in intensity, and those are the gentlest 
and most harmonious that have existed longest in the neu- 
rons — the requisite conditions are met; if it can also be 
shown that light and other radiant waves vary in intensity, 



48 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

such fact will lend strength to the theory, whether or not 
they become progressively gentler and softer as they tra- 
verse space. 

Under such conditions it is not indispensable that such 
slowing take place. It only needs that the gentler vibra- 
tions of radiant energy, and the gentler vibrations into 
which sound and other sense-impressing forces may be 
decomposed and translated in the brain, shall combine 
with the gentler vibrations that enter into the constitution 
of memory and awaken them to a recognition by conscious- 



Resume' 

As a recapitulation of the points so far suggested or 
contended for in our discussion, as the basis of a theory 
of mind and form, the following may be designated as the 
principal. 

First : All energy expresses itself in vibrations either 
actual or implicit. 

Second: The natural or inherent tendency of these 
vibrations is to form figured groups, to enter into definite 
arrangement, and also to produce definite orderly forms 
when acting on ponderable particles. 

Third: The tendency of all classes of vibrations or 
waves, when passing through space or enduring through 
time is to become more simple, mild, and gentle. 

The Brain and Its Activities 

Having thus attempted to set forth in a brief way the 
nature and extent of the involvement of vibration in various 
manifestations of the common force, we may now proceed 
to consider the nature of mental or brain activities, with a 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 49 

view of ascertaining the analogy that may exist between 
them and the forms which external nature tends to take on 
and produce. And since the principal and most important 
of these are thought forms, it may prove helpful to enter 
into a brief consideration of the structure and functions 
of the brain, insofar as may be necessary to serve the pur- 
pose of our investigation. 

The brain, or that part of the cerebro-spinal nervous 
system immediately concerned in conscious intellectual 
activity, consists of three principal divisions, independent 
of one another, and yet very intimately bound together. 
These divisions are the cerebrum, the cerebellum and med- 
ulla. Of these the cerebrum alone is believed to be the 
seat of conscious thought in man; and for the purposes 
of this inquiry the others need be no further considered. 

The cerebrum or f orebrain consists of two lobes or hemi- 
spheres, the one in every respect and almost exactly the 
counterpart of the other. They are connected with one 
another by a great quantity of white fibres, or tubules, 
which pass from every part in each hemisphere to the like 
part in the other, so that the two lobes constitute a verit- 
able twin system. Each cerebral lobe consists of masses 
of gray matter and closely laid bands of connecting white 
fibres or tubules. 

The masses of gray matter are composed of vast num- 
bers of cells called neurons which are situated in the outer 
surface of the brain, and arranged in the form of a thin 
layer that constitutes the cortex. In the cerebral portion 
of these lobes or hemispheres are other cells, arranged in 
the form of two gray ganglia or masses, one on each side. 
These are coupled together by continuations of gray mat- 
ter, and form the gray substance of the optic thalamus and 
corpus striatum. 

The white substance which consists mainly of nerve 



50 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

tubules, fills the space between the outer gray mass which 
forms the surface of the brain, and the mass of gray cells 
of the central ganglions. These white fibres radiate like 
the spokes of a wheel from the gray matter of the central 
ganglions to that of the brain surface, and partly pass 
across from one hemisphere to the other, connecting like 
parts of the two halves of the brain, and partly pass out 
to the general bodily system to carry motor impulses or to 
bring back sensations. 

This system of white fibres or tubules offers a curious 
resemblance in plan of structure to insulated telegraph 
wires or cables. Thus there is in each tubule first a central 
filament of albuminoid material, whose office is to conduct 
nerve force and which corresponds to the central copper 
wire or coil in a cable. Around this is a layer of fatty 
substance called the white substance of Schwann, which is 
a non-conductor of nerve force, and corresponds to the 
non-conducting sheathing of the electric cable or insulated 
wire. Still outside of this is a protective sheath of modi- 
fied connective tissue called the neurilemma, and answer- 
ing to the outer protecting sheath of the cable. 

Each of these fibers or tubules, as it proceeds from the 
neuron with which it is continuous, sends out a greater or 
less number of branches, on the whole bearing a fairly 
close resemblance to a tree and its branches, and for this 
reason called a dendron. 

The nerve tubule constituting the trunk of this dendron 
may enter another neuron than the one from which it 
springs, and thus become continuous with two or possibly 
more neurons. But in the vast majority of instances, the 
dendron is continuous with only a single cell or neuron, its 
branches merely twining about other neurons and conduc- 
ting away at proper times a charge of nerve force, or con- 
veying to them stimuli or impressions from without. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 51 

At and near the surface of the brain, the neurons of 
which the gray matter consists are smallest, getting lar- 
ger towards the central portions of it. The larger neurons 
which have the more regular shape, have prolongations 
reaching out from them, which become continuous with 
the central axis-cylinder of the white nerve tubules. Of 
these branching prolongations or dendrons, some of the 
larger neurons have as many as seven or eight; others have 
but one or two, while many of the smaller ones have none. 
Curiously enough these smaller neurons will on occasion 
project prolongations of their own substance, as a leuko- 
cite might do, to form connecting filaments of communica- 
tion between themselves and neighboring neurons. 

Optic Thalamus and Corpus Striatum 

The optic thalami constitute a pair of large ovoid masses 
of grayish matter situated almost exactly in the centre 
of the brain. Each consists of ganglions or enlargements 
ranged one below the other, and two slender bands of 
gray matter extending down to and being continuous with 
the gray matter of the spinal cord. These ganglions of 
the optic thalami receive connecting filaments from all 
directions, both from the cerebrum and the cerebellum on 
one side, and from the general system throught the medulla 
on the other. 

Throughout the gray matter of the surface of the brain 
are located areas devoted to special tasks; and it seems to 
be the function of the optic thalamus, besides transmitting 
impressions generally, to sort out such impressions as are 
to be separately recorded in the brain, and to direct them 
to the proper location. Indeed the optic thalamus appears 
to be a kind of clearing-house or switchboard, the receiv- 
ing and distributing point for the entire nervous system. 



52 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

The corpora striata constitute a pair of ganglions just 
in front of the optic thalami, made up largely of a core of 
gray matter and connected with the motor nervous sys- 
tem in much the same way as the optic thalamus is with 
the sensory system. Through it as a gateway, pass out- 
ward most of the motor nerve fibers or tubules that carry 
nerve impulses from the brain to the rest of the body. 

Functions of Neurons and Axons 

Various and diversified as are the neurons and axons in 
their structure, in function they are apparently still more 
complex. Especially is this true of the neurons. 

Of the cortical cells, or those on the outside of the cere- 
bral hemispheres, it is known that some are engaged in 
the elaboration of motor impulses, some in the production 
of electric currents, others nerve force, and still others, 
thought. Doubtless, could we ever attain to a full 
knowledge of all the diversified work that is performed in 
the various cells of the brain, we should find it only less 
than infinitely complex and infinitely differentiated. 

As already indicated, it is highly probable that one of 
the principal offices performed by the optic thalamus, is 
the receiving of sensory impressions from all parts of the 
body, and sorting them out and distributing them to the 
various cells of the cerebrum to which they appertain. 
But the first selection and assorting of impressions is 
effected by numbers of little bulbs or corpuscles placed at 
the distal extremities of the nerve fibers, and called various- 
ly, corpuscles of Pacini, tactile corpuscles of Messier, and 
end bulbs of Krause, after their several discoverers. 

It is fairly well established that these end-organs select 
from the impact of force exerted on the nerve endings, 
such sense vibrations as by their structure and function 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 53 

they are capable of receiving and conveying. Thus some 
of them will select and conduct sensations of heat, others of 
cold, others of pain, and still others sensations of qualities 
that are revealed as taste. There are others that make 
still more subtle distinctions, until it would seem that 
scarcely two nerve tubules in the entire body bring the 
same kind of report from without to the brain. As these 
impressions brought in from the external world reach the 
optic thalamus, they are still further sorted out and direct- 
ed to their appropriate location in the cerebrum, cerebel- 
lum, or whatever point the proper location may be. 

The corpus striatum has for its office the sending out of 
motor impulses that are received from the cortex or other 
gray matter to the various muscles whose movements 
they control or direct, and probably they assist in main- 
taining the harmony of development and the nutrition of 
various tissues and organs. It may be justly said, however 
that so much remains to be accounted for in the complex 
processes of the system that all that is known seems but 
a beginning. 

Hitherto no connections have been made out between the 
distal extremities of the trophic axons and the motor axons 
which carry the outward current of nerve force, on the 
one hand, and the sensory axons, which carry the return 
nerve current on the other. Indeed, up to the present 
time, no conductor of nerve force, other than the nerve 
itself has been discovered, and hence no instrument has 
been contrived for its exact measurement, except as to its 
speed. 

It is certain, however, that an electric current is contin- 
uously flowing outward along the motor axons, and another 
coming in along the sensory axons. Now since this electric 
current must complete its curcuit through the tissues 
between the extremities of the nerves, it is rendered highly 



54 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

probable that the same may be the case with the nerve 
current. Furthermore, it seems more than likely that 
as long as life lasts, the curcuit for the nerve force is com- 
pleted by the tissues located between the distal extremities 
of the motor and sensory nerves, and also that a current 
of nerve force, however faint or gentle, is continuously 
making the rounds of every nerve curcuit thus formed, 
whether it be within the brain or within the general system 
as a whole. 

The conditions of thought would seem to demand such 
a continuous current, since if it were wanting, it would 
involve the over-coming of a greater or less amount of 
inertia or the expenditure of force in opening the way, 
every time an impulse was to be sent along a nerve. The 
presence of a constant current would render the conditions 
somewhat similar to the further turning up of a gas jet 
already lighted, or grasping a cable already in motion for 
propelling cars. 

With the aid of this imperfect description of the struc- 
ture and functions of that part of the brain which princi- 
pally constitutes the field of mental activities, or the stage 
upon which the imagination may watch the play of the 
wonderful actors in the drama of thought, and utilizing 
the principles set forth in the preliminary discussion, we 
may now proceed to ascertain, if this be possible, in what 
way and in what form mental impressions are made and 
retained in the neurons, and in what manner they are from 
time to time brought into consciousness. We shall also 
endeavor to obtain an intelligible notion of the appearance 
of memory or the contents of mind in all of its most im- 
portant relations. 

It is not altogether prudent, however, to ignore the part 
probably played in mentation by the nerves of the sym- 
pathetic or vegetative system, and more especially the 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 55 

part they play in the direction and control of the processes 
of growth and repair. 

The deep and strong emotions, whether painful or 
pleasant, are very prone to make themselves felt in the 
region of the coeliac axis or "abdominal brain" as it has 
been called and not inappropriately. The terms "heart- 
ache" "heart-sick" "bowels of compassion" and the like, 
are very suggestive of recognition of an active part as 
played in the matter of the expression of strong emotion 
at least, by the ganglions of the sympathetic nervous sys- 
tem. Indeed it is possible that quite an extensive role 
is played by the sympathetic in the department of subcon- 
scious mental activities, as well as in the effectuation of 
digestion, assimilation and nutrition and various other 
physiological functions. 

There is, however, a great number of such wonderful 
processes carried on in connection with the vital functions 
of organisms both animal and vegetable, that seem subject 
to a deeper source of control than even the sympathetic 
system. The wonderful provision of opsonins in the blood 
which render phagocytosis effective, and various other 
contributions to vital processes, seem to have their source 
in the white cells of the blood. But these cells must derive 
their powers from a source still antecedent to themselves, 
and this remote source may well be the vital corpuscles 
or electrons in which is supposed to inhere the initial 
principle of life. 

The muscular tissue also, as will be mentioned again 
later on, may take a shadowy part in the production of 
thought and other elements of mentation. How could the 
muscles reveal to the nerves their sense of fatigue, their 
degree of strain and their craving for activity, if they had 
not some form of consciousness and some faculty akin 
to thought and its expression? 



56 VIBRATION AND LIFE 



Theory of Memory 

Memory has been very satisfactorily defined as the 
faculty of the mind by which it retains the knowledge of 
previous thought or events. This faculty may manifest 
itself in at least three different forms. 

Fifst : In the persistence in consciousness of impressions 
made upon the mind, or by the spontaneous recurrence 
of such impressions, when it is called remembrance. 

Second: In the recall of such impressions by distinct 
effort, when it is called recollection. 

Third : In a form intermediate between these two, by a 
conscious process of recalling past occurrences, but without 
full and varied reference to particular things, when it is 
called reminiscence. 

In this discussion, however, it is not proposed to restrict 
the term "memory" merely to the retaining or recalling 
of previous thoughts or impressions or other product of 
brain activity, but also to embrace the method or mechan- 
ism of their retention and reproduction or reappearance 
in consciousness. 

The undertaking in view is, in fact, an endeavor to set 
forth a theory of mind and life as a department of philoso- 
phy, based on the tendency of interacting vibrations 
toward the production of definite forms, whether of 
thoughts or things. 

In the fullest sense then, memory may be regarded as the 
persistence in the neurons, if not elsewhere among the or- 
gans and tissues of the body, of every character of accumu- 
lated sensation or perception, whether in the form of ideas, 
emotions or other content of mind, together with their 
susceptibility of being aroused from time to time in such a 
way as to be recognised in consciousness. This recognition 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 57 

of recalled experiences may take on the distinct form of 
ideas, emotions and the like, or that of indefinite modifi- 
cation in various ways and in various degrees, of the exist- 
ing store of thought or feeling. 

In the endeavor to explain memory, as found in living 
organisms in the light of the foregoing principles, we may 
take notice of certain phenomena that have been compared 
to it by way of illustration, and to which it has been 
supposed to manifest a similarity suggestive of some as 
yet little understood relation. 

Thus some investigators have thought to find analogies 
for memory in the inorganic world, or at least in the acci- 
dents of dead matter; and particularly in a certain suscep- 
tibility of light vibrations, whereby they may be stored on 
sheets of paper or other material, and there preserved for 
longer or shorter periods of time, in the form of latent vibra- 
tions, to reappear at the summons of various developing 
agents. 

If, for instance, engravings be laid on sheets of paper or 
linen and the two kept together in a dark place, after 
having first been exposed to the sun's action, the sheets 
can months afterward, by the aid of appropriate reagents, 
be made to yield persistent traces of the sun's action upon 
their surfaces. Similarly if a key or other like object be 
laid upon a sheet of white paper and the two be exposed to 
the direct rays of the sun, and then the paper be laid away 
in a darkened place, years after, the spectral image of the 
key will still be visible. 

It is a widely prevalent notion, even among leading 
authorities, that in some such way as this, images are im- 
printed and preserved in the neurons; these authorities 
having apparently overlooked the fact that ideas must be 
made up of elements derived through the hearing, touch, 
taste, smell, and other senses, as well as through sight. 



58 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

The examples just given, however, suggest but a single 
element of memory, namely: the retention and ultimate 
release of visual impressions alone, and that too in only 
a passive state. 

There is in these examples, as already intimated, no 
suggestion of impressions derived from the senses other 
than sight, and that too only in the form of a fixed visual 
image. The persistent inter-association, the incessant 
active changes, the endless disappearance and reappear- 
ance that characterize the content of memory derived from 
reports of all the senses, find here no parallel. 

The light given off by a photograph or a picture is not 
the result of its own proper activity, but is simply a re- 
flected light, and the only effect of a photograph or a 
picture is to alter the arrangement of the rays of light 
which it gives out by reflection. If ideas and other more 
complex mental images are simply photographs, simply 
lifeless images or pictures, how are they ever to be awaken- 
ed into renewed activity? Above all how are they to 
awaken each other as they are perpetually doing? 

Throughout all the waking hours of life and often in 
sleep, from moment to moment there spring up and move 
on in the brain, vivid and persistent trains of thought or 
extended and far-ranging reveries, with the senses prac- 
tically closed to all excitations from without. With 
endless persistence and variety, sensations, ideas and 
emotions are unceasingly woven in numberless patterns in 
the untiring, self -driven and self -directed loom of fancy. 

By no possibility could mere lifeless pictures disport 
themselves in such a way. They might be piled moun- 
tain high, they might be strung or jumbled or arranged in 
whatever form, but there they would continue to slumber. 
They could no more arouse each other, nor awake them- 
selves, than could the lifeless plates upon which they may 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 59 

have been impressed. For even though it might be that 
the dead can bury their dead, we may rest in the fullest 
assurance that the dead can never wake their dead. 

Memory an Active Process 

That which produces in the mind images or represen- 
tations of external things, and that which perpetuates its 
content in an active form must, therefore, consist of 
elements embracing some active form of energy. It must be 
constantly producing and giving off some form of vibra- 
tions, and not merely reflecting in a passive way undula- 
tory emanations derived from either internal or external 
sources. 

The energy producing mental activities must be devel- 
oped either in the neurons, or in the blood and then con- 
veyed to the neurons. In the plant the energy of growth 
and of whatever living function is performed can be devel- 
oped only in its albuminoid protoplasm, and this by 
analogy would place the laboratory of energy in animals in 
the white cells of the blood. A retrograde metamorphosis 
taking place either in the blood plasma primarily, or in the 
blood cells into which the plasma has been transformed, 
must supply the dynamic agency of all thought and all 
thought products. That is to say, such retrograde meta- 
morphosis or destructive changes of food elements must 
supply the motive power. 

But then there must be present in the neurons a material 
ponderable element upon which the energy so developed 
can act, even though we trace matter, in the light of recent 
teachings, to a state in which energy and matter seem to 
merge into one substance. Though energy travels through 
all space, we cannot conceive of it as remaining stationary 
in space and vibrating independently of material or pon- 



60 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

derable substance. Energy begins with ponderable matter 
and ends with or extends to ponderable matter, and in 
that attitude alone can we conceive it. That is not a 
wave which does not travel. 

Since the most vivid and lively sensations have always 
been those of sight, men early drifted into the impression 
that all thought forms resulting from the activities of the 
neurons take on the character of visual pictures, and hence 
such forms came to be called ideas. But this evidently 
cannot be the case any more than that ideas consist of 
forms derived exclusively from sensations of taste, hearing, 
smell, or touch, though we might be little able to conceive 
the appearance these latter structures might assume in 
the brain. 

The only state in which the reports of all the special and 
internal senses can be brought together in one class, is in 
the guise of vibrations operating together to form figured 
groups, or groups in the form of figures. It would seem 
that all characters of sense impressions must be trans- 
lated into interacting vibrations. 

However, there is no evidence and no good reason to 
believe that a form which in the brain constitutes the idea 
of an object, bears any direct resemblance to the picture 
of such object. All the senses working together set up 
in the neurons, orderly vibrations that may eventually 
present an aspect of unity, which is the so-called idea or 
other thought product. If ideas are made up of parts even 
though these parts consist of no more than an orderly 
movement of force impulses, they must have position 
with reference to one another, and therefore, the image 
that impresses consciousness will present the same arrange- 
ment as to shape or form, from whichever of the senses it 
may be derived. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 61 



Constitution of Ideas 

In what way then, can these images called ideas be 
constructed and perpetuated? That they can exist as pure 
force independent of the support of material or ponderable 
elements, as already indicated, we cannot conceive. As 
said before, we have no experience or conception of the 
operation of force, except as proceeding from or in some 
way connected with ponderable matter; nor can we form 
any conception of such a thing. That ideas and their 
modified combinations could consist of an orderly arrange- 
ment of molecules, taking the shape of visual or other 
sense images, is scarcely more intelligible, or apparently 
less impossible. The number of forms or corpuscles and 
images required for the effectuation of memory, must be 
too great for them to consist altogether of material struc- 
tures. 

It is much more consonant with the known facts of 
natural science to suppose that certain atoms or corpuscles 
that enter into the structure of the neurons, possibly 
differing in character from anything the laboratory has 
yet revealed, modify by various processes of refraction 
or reflection, the forces playing on them,or passing through 
them so as to give these forces definite groupings or defin- 
ite forms. 

These constantly operating forces or streams of force 
are supposed to play in definite paths, somewhat in the 
same manner as the forces that arrange iron filings into 
figures in the magnetic field, the molecules of water in 
forming snowflakes and frost flowers, or such as direct 
the deflected pendulum in the formation of Lissajou's 
figures. And here it would seem that photographic 
resemblance as to form might possess some application. 



m VIBRATION AND LIFE 

Experience teaches that as a general rule, the oftener an 
impression is repeated, the more tenaciously it is retained. 
This would render it more than probable that the groups 
of material or ponderable corpuscles which are supposed to 
function in the neurons, and direct the streams of force 
moving through the brain, compelling these streams to 
assume thought-forms, become more and more stable and 
uniform in proportion as they are the longer acting or 
acted upon in one connection, and more stable and uniform 
with the lapse of time, in whatever way such uniformity 
and stability is produced. 

If the case were otherwise, if the basic elements of these 
grouped vibrations were as readily displaced as placed, as 
readily disarranged as arranged, such a thing as lasting 
memory would be impossible. New impressions would be 
continuously impairing or displacing the old, and it would 
be as easy to unlearn as to learn. 

Vital Corpuscles and Heredity 

But such facts as these may have another bearing or 
another significance, and one of great moment in biology. 
It is a question worthy of ponder, whether the supposed 
vital corpuscles themselves may not be permanently 
modified while occupying vital relations in connection with 
living things, and consequently whether or not the presence 
in the higher orders of life, of vestiges and rudiments of 
lower forms might not depend on the fact that impressions 
and modifications are stamped on vital corpuscles and 
groups, while they are passing through lower ancestral 
forms in a vital relation, and that these impressions fail 
to be effaced upon the dissolution of such forms. Such 
corpuscles might manifest these imposed or engrafted 
tendencies when later on they enter into vital relations 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 63 

with higher forms of life. The subject is certainly one 
that presents great difficulties in the dynamics of life. 

This is indeed so bold a proposition that one can here do 
little more than cautiously suggest it or hint at it. There 
is enough of probability on the face of it, however, to 
justify us in giving it a moment's consideration, especially 
as there are a number of facts in the domain of biology, as 
already indicated, for which it affords a plausible explana- 
tion. 

It has already been suggested that unlimited divi- 
sion of vital energy as of all other substances, without 
corresponding diminution in the magnitude of the resulting 
parts as compared with the original whole, is unthinkable 
as \t is impossible. In fact it violates one of the principal 
axioms of mathematics. It therefore follows that the 
vital energy of the offspring, no matter what may be the 
nature of such energy, cannot be derived from that of the 
parent form, since the parent form remains undiminished 
in its mental and physical integrity, after the production 
and separation of the offspring. Each new individual 
of the offspring must therefore derive its elements both 
physical and psychical from extraneous sources. 

It is as difficult to conceive that a peculiarity of struc- 
ture or power of function either mental or physical, such 
for instance as a mental trick, a rudiment or a reversion 
could be passed to a single offspring, without diminution of 
the like peculiarity in the parent, as it would be to con- 
ceive the unlimited division of the elements of the parent 
form without diminution. Therefore the tendency of 
energy that results in the production of an hereditary 
crooked finger, or a roman nose, must be attached to 
external corpuscles, or inhere in energy extraneous to the 
parent. The same would be true of the energy of such 
rudimentary structures as constitute reversions to, and 
vestiges of lower animal forms. 



64 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

If it be true that the same energy that builds up higher 
classes of vital forms, builds up in them the vestiges of 
lower forms, then we are driven to the startling conclusion 
that vital corpuscles gathered in from the ocean of life 
that surrounds us, are used again and again in living forms, 
and that they carry with them into the new forms the 
impressions received by them while passing through the 
lower ones. 

There are some facts that seem to militate against this 
view. Thus the fact referred to in another connection 
that if the horn of a deer be injured while it is tender or in 
the velvet as it is called, the horn subsequently growing in 
the same place, will during the rest of the deer's life be 
deformed, although the deer sheds its horns every year, 
and though the matrix has not at all been injured. But 
this deformity differs in its nature from rudiments and 
reversions in the feature that it is not hereditary. Here 
there is no reason to believe that there has been any loss 
or alteration in our hypothetical vital corpuscles. The 
change in growth seems only secondary. 

The view here advanced of the origin of hereditary ves- 
tigial traits was first broached by the author in the year 
1870; in a medical thesis and while he readily 
admits that it is too bold to be advanced otherwise 
then tentatively and provisionally, through forty years of 
thought and study, he has not been able to find a ready 
avenue of escape from it. However, an alternative view 
will be considered when we come to treat of instinct. 

Parallels and Analogies in Vital and Physical 
Forces 

Among the phenomena manifested in the behavior of 
physical forces, we may find many suggestive parallels, 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 65 

and also many more or less remote analogies to the opera- 
tion of vital, or at least of mental forces. And here we 
may enlist many helps to the imagination in pursuing 
our quest, however inadequate and unsatisfactory such 
help may be. But with this assistance, such as it is, we 
may endeavor to ascertain in what respects the elements 
of thought, feeling, and memory, bear resemblance to the 
common forms of force as exhibited in undulatory motion. 

As already more than once pointed out, all forms of 
force and all expressions of energy have come to be regarded 
as so many different modes of motion. With a view to its 
application in this connection, an attempt has already 
been made to prove that all motion ultimately consists 
potentially, at least, of vibration or undulation. 

In the investigation of the transmission of force by 
means of vibration, we also seemed to find reason to 
believe that such transmission involves increase in the 
amplitude and decrease in the intensity of the wave move- 
ment; or failing this condition, that there is at least some 
kind of softening effect exerted on these waves that is 
due to the influence of time and distance. 

Assuming this contention to be proved to a reasonable 
certainty, let us now with this light proceed to examine the 
phenomena of mental activities, and ascertain whether 
they too, do not also depend not only upon some form of 
force manifested in undulations, but also in undulations 
that with lapse of time take on a character of increased 
gentleness, tenderness, and harmony; and that in this 
respect the force we regard as psychic or mental, presents 
a striking analogy to and correspondence with other forms 
of force found in external nature. 



66 VIBRATION AND LIFE 



Consciousness 

Before proceeding further along this line it might not be 
inappropriate to attempt to gain some insight into the 
nature of consciousness, although in its full comprehension 
it is entirely beyond our grasp. In its ultimate nature it 
must be accepted as something wholly incomprehensible 
and inexplicable with the light at present available, or 
that in any likelihood ever will be available. But there is 
no valid reason for believing that consciousness is an 
adventitious power or faculty, or that at some or any stage 
of evolution, it was added to the other powers of living 
beings. It must have existed in a latent or potential 
form in the very earliest and lowest forms of life. Indeed 
consciousness must have been present in the atoms, ions, 
electrons, corpuscles, or whatever they may be that con- 
stitute the habitat of what we here have called the soul, 
and which is most likely but an emanation from them. 

It is not easy to disprove that it is a state of feeling, a 
rudimentary form of consciousness as well as conscience, 
that guides plants in many of their movements, and all 
classes of animals in their social behavior. We have seen 
that if all the energy of the life of a race were restricted to 
a single pair, the attenuating effect of reproduction must 
result in the speedy exhaustion of its vital energy, and that 
the perpetuation of life by the multiplication of living 
things presupposes everywhere about us in nature, a sea 
of life, a veritable ocean of the vital principle. 

And while we concede the inscrutability of the intimate 
nature of consciousness, we may still feel encouraged to 
examine its contents and its workings, the repetition and 
perpetuation of which may be called memory, which, for 
want of a better term, we may extend to embrace the 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 67 

entire residium of impressions made on or through vital 
processes. 

It is mainly through the uniformity of traces supposed to 
be left by such impressions that we are to be guided to 
their source, and out of a multitude of analogies, more or 
less obscure, we are to gather the light that is to illumine 
a most recondite, and at the same time a most interesting 
subject. The utmost however, that may be hoped for is 
to blaze a way, dimly enough marked, for whosoever will 
pursue the matter to a satisfactory conclusion. But to 
this feature of the discussion we shall need more than once 
to recur. 



Analogies of Expression in Animals 

The first if not the most striking of the analogies that 
serve to elucidate the laws manifested by the common 
force of nature, as indicating the method or character 
of expression among living things, is to be found in the 
similarity of tone and movement in which all animals 
are, as a rule, accustomed to give expression to similar 
feelings and desires. Like feelings and desires, as well as 
like ideas among men and nearly all animals having the 
power of vocal expression, call forth the same character 
of tone, the same character of emphasis and inflection, 
and are even accompanied by the same or a similar 
character of bodily movement. Conversely, these tones 
and movements, when they impress animals from without, 
apparently produce in them corresponding feelings and 
desires. 

The growl of anger, the exclamation of joy, the cry of 
pain, the wail of grief, the chuckle of gratified desire, the 
pitiful notes of despair and surrender, the cooings of love, 



68 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

and all other voicings of feeling and passion, we may readi- 
ly recognize, even though we may never have met with 
an individual of the species from which they proceed. 

Whatever the animal, in whatever part of the earth it 
may have found a home, or however high or low in the 
scale of being its place may be, the utterance or expres- 
sion of its feelings and desires seems invariably the same in 
its essential character, and appropriate to the passion, 
desire, or feeling sought to be expressed. In those lower 
classes of animals in which voice is wanting, expressive 
movements are resorted to, that seemingly correspond 
with those which supplement spoken language or tone in 
the higher classes, and which are manifestly appropriate 
to and suggestive of the evident feelings and desires exper- 
ienced by such animals. 

These various tones and expressive movements obvious- 
ly have never been learned by the different species of 
animals from one another; and it is quite certain that they 
have never been derived by tradition or inheritance from 
a common ancestor. Any common ancestor they could 
have had must have been voiceless. Long before the 
power of vocal expression could have been attained, ani- 
mals were already scattered over the earth and widely 
separated. And yet no island of the sea is so remote, no 
forest recess so deep, no mountain gorge so secluded or 
inacessible, that its inhabitants have not in some way 
learned the universal language of the feelings. 

Beyond a reasonable doubt, then, the employment of 
the expressive tones and movements in question has had a 
common origin, and is due to a common cause. All species 
of animals have derived their language, employing the 
term in its widest sense, from some common source, have 
learned it from a common teacher. 

What is that source? Who £§ that teacher? Under 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 69 

what rules and guidance have the observed results been 
attained? For, whatever views may be held as to the 
origin of life on earth, we now know that these results are 
accomplished, not by miracle, but by natural processes in 
accordance with unerring changeless law; the law of the 
manifestation of universal energy working in and through 
nature. 

The foregoing facts seem to point definitely to the con- 
clusion that all mental impressions and activities whatever, 
are due to the behavior of the vibrations or undulations 
that are the mode of expression of the forces operative 
in that part of the brain which constitutes the arena 
of such activities. These vibrations which are persistent 
and only less than infinite in number and variety of combi- 
nations, ordinarily play upon the neurons unapprehended 
by consciousness, and thus perform the myriad tasks of 
bodily growth and change and of subconscious mental 
work, while from time to time, they prove strong enough 
to claim recognition on the part of consciousness. 

Nature of Memory 

It is the various groupings of the vibrations of the nerve 
energy in the brain that constitute all forms of the mani- 
festation of mental activity, whether of sensation, idea, 
emotion, judgment or any other character. And it is 
the persistence of these groups in the neurons, together 
with the various modifications they receive from successive 
sense impressions, that constitutes what might rightly be 
denominated memory. These impressions it must be 
noted, however, refuse to be merely preserved. For, 
caged in the neurons they must be allowed all manner of 
intricate free excursions giving new positions and arrange- 
ments; each promenade calling for new partners in the 
never ending dance, 



70 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

In order to utilize the aid offered by the various charac- 
teristics of the common force in interpreting mental mani- 
festations, we may now particularize, and trace out some 
of the many resemblances between the different forms and 
aspects it presents in such manifestations, and the affec- 
tions exhibited by the mind in receiving, retaining, and 
reproducing impressions. 

Mental and physical force or energy as was long ago 
pointed out by Sir William Carpenter, are correlated and 
mutually exhaustive. Almost the entire strength of either 
body or mind can be exhausted in work done by the other. 
Ages ago, the author of Ecclesiastes declared that much 
study is a weariness to the flesh. To claim then that men- 
tal energy is distinct from all other and peculiar, is to claim 
that the energy of muscle is also distinct and peculiar, and 
in that case it would be consistent to claim for muscle a 
separate spirit, as likewise for the plasma of the various 
tissues. 

If this contention were true, it would result in removing 
the energies of both the mind and the body from the cate- 
gory of the common force; and this in the face of the fact 
that we can definitely calculate the quantity of energy 
communicated to the body by the oxidation of a given 
quantity of food. At the risk of further repetition, it may 
be said that all these facts point to a peculiar atom or 
corpuscle rather than to a peculiar force as the basis of 
life. 

We have already seen that waves of water, the vibrations 
or tremors resulting from the shock of earthquakes, as well 
as many other kinds of wave movement, grow progressive- 
ly slower, gentler and more harmonious as they advance 
through space, and that if the same has not been proven 
true of the waves of light and sound, yet that these too 
carry in their gait some of the marks of travel. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 71 

It is obvious that a mere transformation can add noth- 
ing. That is to say that nothing can be absolutely gained 
by a mere transformation of parts. Therefore, whatever 
appears in the thing transformed or translated, has existed 
in the original. The coarser waves have in them , only 
what they derive from the finer vibrations that consti- 
tute them. 

Returning then to the contemplation of memory in the 
wide sense in which we have felt constrained to regard it, 
and with special reference to the laws bearing on the 
relation of the intensity of wave movement to distance of 
travel in time or space, it may be said to be a matter of 
common observation that ideas of things or events far 
removed from the present in time or space, are called up in 
the mind by suggestive impressions that reach us through 
the medium of slow and gentle vibrations. On the other 
hand, suggestions presented to us in terms of short, violent 
or abrupt and inharmonious vibrations, call up ideas of 
things less distant, and also ideas more recently formed, 
or feelings more recently experienced. 

Thus the view of lofty mountains dim and azure-hued 
with distance, vistas opening out into the boundless ocean, 
the moaning of the winds through the pines and leafless 
forests, and above all the strains of low pitched, soft and 
plaintive music, fill the mind with reminiscences of things 
that are far away, and events of the long and almost for- 
gotten past. And so it comes that for that simple instru- 
ment of music which gives the softest and most melting 
of tones, "far windharp" carries everywhere the impress 
of a self -suggested name. 

On the other hand, quick and lively tunes, spirited 
breezy music, necessarily made up of short vibrations, 
reenforce the vibratory currents in the neurons that have 
to do with quick movements, and thus the inclination or 



72 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

tendency to quick movements is impressed in consciousness 
or even unconsciously awakened. Indeed such move- 
ments are most often called forth or come forth involun- 
tarily, before they are suggested to consciousness. In 
either event, the reason or cause of such quick movement 
is, that the incoming vibrations correspond in character 
with the memory vibrations that constitute the record of 
their respective impressions in the brain and give them 
added strength. 

The memory record of recent events and things nearby 
is preserved in the neurons, by means of, as well as in terms 
of, short vibrations, so that when these are aroused and 
strengthened by other incoming short and sharp vibrations 
the mind intuitively feels and realizes that they come from 
some object in reach; and it is for this reason that we 
instinctively and involuntarily move under such circum- 
stances as if to seize such object or to avoid it. The snap 
of a finger nearby will startle us, while the roar of cannon in 
the distance merely quiets us into listening. 

No one dances to "Old Hundred," and no one worships 
or laments in ragtime. So, upon the other hand, whatever 
is revealed or made palpable to consciousness in terms of 
softened, slow or gentle vibrations, reenforces such vibra- 
tions in the neurons as have become the memory of, or 
that perpetuate in memory, impressions of events and 
objects that are long past or seemingly far away. 

Under such circumstances and conditions, the body is 
impressed through the mind to stillness, to quiet and sil- 
ence, because the source and cause of these vibrations is 
instinctively recognized as being far away and beyond its 
reach. "Be still and know that I am God," is an injunc- 
tion aptly suggestive of an all pervading truth. For only 
in stillness and silence can the mind even attempt to grasp 
or contemplate the infinite. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 73 

This relation of fitness, as between the mode of sugges- 
tion and the thing suggested, between the language em- 
ployed and the thought it conveys or the thing it describes, 
has found universal expression in the choice of tones in 
music and speech, and of measure, rythm and cadence in 
poetry as well as in all expressive bodily movements; in 
short, in all the schemes and delineations by which art 
has sought to impress the mind through the portrayal of 
the abiding truths of nature. It is the key to all harmony, 
the spirit of every symphony. It is the inspiration of 
genius. It is "the law even the holy law that imposes 
beauty on the artist." 

In every clime and in every age, men seek to conduct the 
exercises imposed by their religious beliefs, with a solemnity 
distinctly related to and suggestive of the estimation in 
which are held the objects of their worship. If the deity 
selected for their adoration be regarded as limited in power 
and incomplete in divine attributes, then the speech, the 
attitude, and the character of movement and other acces- 
sories of worship, are not greatly different from those 
employed by men in their familiar intercourse with one 
another. 

Thus to the Greeks, Jupiter, whose throne was no higher 
than the crest of Olympus, where they themselves could 
chase the panting hart, was little more than a superior 
Greek. Besides, the Greeks themselves were too exalted 
in intellectual acumen, too clear cut in their mental vision, 
to regard with extreme awe the claims of any supposed 
superior being, either presented or represented to them for 
adoration. But as more than once has been suggested, 
nations and peoples, dwelling among cloud-compelling 
mountains or in the midst of frequent astounding out- 
breaks of storm and earthquake, and often terrified by 
famine and pestilence, came to regard their deities with 
an awe correspondingly greater. 



74 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

It must have been in the tame expanse of the delta of the 
Nile that the idea was suggested of a God who talked with 
men face to face as a man speaks to his neighbor, or who 
came down in the cool of the day to walk in a garden. 

But the deity who sat enthroned above the sky -piercing 
Himalayas, or rumbled his thunders from lofty Sinai, 
aroused emotions in the bosoms of his worshippers that 
called for soft, deep monotones, slow and submissive, as 
the language of devotion, and for whatever grave and 
solemn accessories might be devised to manifest the awe 
with which their minds were impressed. What else can 
mean the peculiar "far away" feature of the "holy tone" 
possessed or affected by the leading votaries of nearly all 
religions, or what the full-volumed resounding echoes 
provided for in the structure of religious temples. 

This language of worship, varying with the conception 
each worshipper forms of the character of his chosen deity, 
has not in any likelihood been passed from any one people 
to others, or handed down from any common ancestor as a 
tradition. There must then be a cause for it in the nature 
of things, and that cause must be in the constitution of the 
human mind and the nature of energy; a cause that oper- 
ates everywhere and continuously. The universal aim in 
religious services devoted to beings conceived of as possess- 
ing unlimited might and power, and seemingly far removed 
is to give expression to feelings, ideas, and emotions nat- 
urally awakened by the contemplation of a being vaguely 
conceived, vast, gentle, kindly, and far away. 

Therefore such music and tones of speech and other 
accessories are habitually chosen for the act of worship 
as may arouse such memory waves in the organ of mind 
as are most nearly related to those by which impressions 
of an object conceived to be vague, vast, gentle, kindly, 
and far away would be communicated to it; for, undulations 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 75 

of this ample nature are the primal elements out of which 
our ideas of such objects are formed, and by means of 
which they are preserved and perpetuated in memory. 

Religious or sacred paintings and sculpture partake of 
a like character, and this character serves aptly to express 
and convey an important truth, all-pervading and eternal; 
namely : the truth that religion is born of the gentlest vibra- 
tions that the trembling ether can convey to the human 
mind. Notable especially is the expression of far away, 
restful communion portrayed in the features of portraits 
of the Madonna and other sacred paintings, masterpieces 
of genius, created and struck off by it in moments of its 
most complete abandonment to the spirit of inspiration. 

And not only is it true that men incline to transform 
these gentle influences of the manifestations of energy in 
their own minds and hearts and ascribe their origin to 
their deities, but they also personify them and out of them 
create their gods. While the race was yet young, when the 
sound of men's voices, in answer to their calls came back 
to them from cliff and crag and cave, they conceived that a 
hidden spirit was answering back their words, and they 
deified the fancied spirit and named it "Echo." 

And so when men came to feel their bosoms surging with 
emotions of love and awe and mystic veneration, creatures 
of the gentlest undulations the universal energy can evoke, 
they conceived that these feelings, though really born of 
their own hearts and minds, were the voice of an unseen 
spirit; and this spirit they personified, gave it a local 
habitation and called it "God." And the gods are mostly 
good, for men have made them of their best. 

The proneness and power to adapt tones and movements 
to the nature of the ideas to be expressed, is strikingly 
shown in the language of children and savages, who ever 
seem to be closer to nature than her maturer offspring. 



76 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

Thus the child will speak of an object, but a short distance 
away, it may be, but which in the untraveled pathways of 
its brain may have impressed its consciousness as being 
far distant, as "away off yonder" in slow, deliberate and 
measured tones that plainly correspond to an unconscious 
realization of the manner in which impressions made 
under such circumstances reach, and are recorded in the 
sensorium. 

It is said that there are certain savages, who, having no 
modification of terms in their particular dialects to express 
comparison and being greatly deficient in words, are 
accustomed to express various degrees of property or 
quality by varying tones of voice and appropriate, express- 
ive gestures. Thus the same word in such dialects may 
be made to designate a rill, a rivulet, a brook, or a river, 
according to the tone and gestures with which it is enun- 
ciated. 

The tendency of the thoughts and feelings toward a 
gentle pervasive melancholy, when dwelling upon one's 
experiences of the remote in time and space, or upon fading 
reminiscences of the long past, is strikingly exemplified in 
the music of savages and other primitive peoples; the music 
of such peoples being almost invariably pitched in the 
minor key. 

Under similar promptings, civilized peoples likewise 
associate sadness and melancholy with the minor key, 
which for that reason is commonly called the pathetic key. 
All of this seems to indicate that this character of music 
and this class of feelings rest in some way on a common 
foundation, or touch in some way upon a common chord. 

It is known that the minor key is produced by reducing 
the number of vibrations in the second from 300 which 
constitute the major key, to 280 for the minor key. But 
why should the dropping of 20 waves to the second be 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 77 

conducive to feelings of sadness or melancholy? We have 
reason to suppose, as later on will be more fully explained, 
that the elements which in the neurons constitute the 
record of gentle melancholy, are vibrations that along with 
other and unknown changes have become slow and obscure, 
and which when reenforced by kindred lagging waves, and 
aroused so as to affect consciousness, suggest the far away 
and the long past with a dim recall of broken ties. 

That which appears far away to the savage or the child 
may not appear so to the scientific or the cultivated mind ; 
and therefore with the passing away of the childhood of the 
race or the individual, in a manner passes away also the 
significance of the employment of the minor key in music. 
The saddening influence of the tremolo is susceptible of a 
like explanation. 

The simple dropping off of 20 vibrations to the second 
in the change to the minor key may not seem adequate to 
the effect produced, but it may also be that the loss can 
operate by way of suggestion; that is, by arousing in 
consciousness, dormant feelings of sadness that have been 
derived from various other sources and stored in memory 
on various other occasions. The literature of poetry is 
rich in this class of suggestive features ; and the chief merit 
of many a masterpiece consists largely in the fact that it 
affords apt and appropriate employment for tones and 
movements expressive of the various feelings and emotions. 
It is this correspondence with an internal order, this far- 
reaching suggestiveness that constitutes the basic truth, 
and the real value of the most esteemed productions in 
literature. 

The Theory Formulated 

Having proceeded thus far with this preliminary inves- 
tigation we may now appropriately enter upon a definite 



78 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

and systematic statement of the theory to which the fore- 
going facts lead, and which they tend to elucidate. The 
theory assumes: — 

First: That the basis of life is constituted of certain 
infinitely minute and vastly abundant refined material 
corpuscles, endowed with a form of energy which may be 
denominated the vital energy, and that these corpuscles 
with their forces have a tendency to enter into groups and 
forms that correspond to every possible manifestation of 
life, and that they direct and primarily determine all natu- 
ral physical features, and the nature and quality of the 
mental constitution, that is to say, they control and deter- 
mine the inauguration, the development, the building up 
and maintaining alike of mind and body. 

Second : That all bodily growth and movement and all 
mental activity as well, are the result of vibrations ulti- 
mately directed and controlled by the fine movements of 
the vital corpuscles in accordance with the natural laws 
governing vibration. 

Third: That a constant current of nerve force, or a 
force that is susceptible of being transformed into nerve 
force, derived from nutrition supplied the body, is con- 
tinuously traversing the nerve circuits of the system; and 
that this force consists in large part if not wholly of vibra- 
tions similar to those found in external nature, and trans- 
latable into them. 

Fourth : That in the cells of the nerve system and in 
various combinations of such cells, orderly groupings are 
effected among their constituent atoms, molecules or 
corpuscles, by waves of light or whatever else may affect 
any of the senses, or enter in any way into a modification 
of the nerve elements. 

Fifth: That such of these vibrations as are realized as 
sensations, together with such as affect the sensorium with- 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 79 

out exciting consciousness, combine by certain rules of 
unconscious or automatic logic, or quasi design or intelli- 
gence, in such way as to form perceptions, ideas, emotions, 
judgments, and all other like outcome of mentation. 

Sixth: That these groups of vibrations passing from 
molecule to molecule within the neurons, or from neuron 
to neuron by way of the connecting white tubules, or even 
by direct diffuse emanation, may rise successively into the 
scope of consciousness; and that they occupy the atten- 
tion of consciousness in the order of the number and inten- 
sity of the waves of which they are composed. 

Seventh : That the tendency of all these vibrations and 
vibration groups is to grow gradually slower, gentler, and 
weaker; that normally there circulate continuously, both 
within and among the neurons, inumerable trains of vibra- 
tions, the residue of former sense impressions that have 
become too weak, and others arriving or springing up as 
emanations that have never been sufficiently vigorous to 
force themselves unassisted into recognition by conscious- 
ness; and that these gentle or subsiding vibrations, from 
time to time, excite the attention of consciousness and 
gain recognition from it, either by taking to themselves 
other waves of a nature and character akin to their own, 
gathered from those already in the neurons, or else by 
gathering and assimilating softened and gentle undulations 
directly from without. 

Eighth: That all sensations, perceptions, ideas, emotions 
desires, judgments, and other similar outcome of mental 
activity, whatever, are essentially one, and have as their 
basis the same ultimate elements, namely : sense-impress- 
ing vibrations coming from without, chiefly from luminous 
bodies, variously combined with or grafted upon the 
normal force movement which is constant in the nerve 
system. 



80 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

Memory in its fullest extent, as already observed, is 
supposed to be nothing else than the persistence of these 
undulations in the nerve centers, either with or without 
their distinct reappearance in consciousness. Nor is it to be 
lost sight of that the development of physical form and 
structure, as relates to living bodies and physiological 
activities as well, are likewise based upon the same funda- 
mental elements as the mental; all of them are the outcome 
of vibratory expression of some form or aspect of energy. 

Limitation of Sensation 

The restrictions to which the range of sensation and 
perception, and consequently memory is subjected, must 
be determined by the range of vibrations that affect the 
sensorium. And since only a small proportion of the 
vibrations that occur in nature may produce conscious 
impressions on the human mind, it is a just inference 
that among the vibrations that make up the constant and 
permanent nerve current, and which are the immediate 
result of tissue metamorphosis, are not found any to corres- 
pond in character to such as coming from without do not 
meet with a response. That is to say that while the variety 
of vibrations in nature is practically infinite, the number 
of the kinds capable of affecting consciousness is limited 
to the number native to the brain. 

Some nerves can carry only messages of pain, and are 
unaffected by such vibrations as affect sight or hearing. 
Indeed the general rule with sensory nerves is that each 
class is unresponsive to the impressions that affect the 
others, and the neurons are probably restricted in receiv- 
ing impressions in the same way that the axons are in 
conveying them. 

The proportion of vibrations out of all that may at any 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 81 

time be in existence, that can affect the senses, must be 
very small indeed. Aside from the infra-sensible and 
the ultra-sensible vibrations, there must be, it would seem, 
vast numbers that go to fill up the gaps or hiatuses, which 
are not covered by any sensing power in the mind, such 
for example as those that exist between the different colors, 
or between the point where sound leaves off and sight be- 
gins. Thus vibrations of the order of sound below sixteen 
to the second or above^JifiyQOG-t© the second are not recog- 
nized by the sense of hearing. The kindred senses of 
touch and pain fail when the vibrations are above a few 
thousand, and this so completely that a member or an 
organ may be severed from the body of an animal by a 
rapidly revolving knife without the animal feeling it. 

Smell and taste may and probably do depend upon some 
kind of chemical effect produced upon the extremities of 
the appropriate special nerves, but this effect must be 
accomplished in terms of vibration; and especially must 
the impressions made upon the end organs at the extrem- 
ities of the nerves in these cases, be carried to the nerve 
centers or sensorium by nerve currents that are incontest- 
ibly vibratory. As the existence of these vibrations has 
not yet been demonstrated, the exact range of their 
rapidity is of course not known, but judging from the low 
speed of the nerve current, it is probably not great. 

Sight begins with 395 million million vibrations per 
second and ends with 760 million millions, but between 
the different colors there are gaps in sensation that in 
nature must be filled with a vast range of vibrations im- 
perceptible to the senses. The gaps that exist between the 
different kinds of light, and among other sense-impressing 
forces, are far more likely to be due to deficiencies in the 
equipment of the sensorium than to the processes by which 
the vibrations are emitted. Vibrations, it would seem 



82 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

must be sorted out by the organs of sense in distinct 
groups or stages for the different kinds of light, otherwise 
their impressions would so gradually blend one with an- 
other that there could be no distinction of colors. And yet, 
since in very sensitive states of the nerve centers, vibra- 
tions may be perceived or revealed that under ordinary 
conditions are not manifest; and since many of the lower 
animals are sensible to impressions that are wholly 
imperceptible to our minds, it would appear that the mar- 
gins of these gaps are not abrupt, but that the power of 
perception shades off gradually. Thus, while color and 
other sensations are in a great measure rendered distinct 
by the arrangement of the apparatus of mind, they shade 
off one into another as is required by the laws or conditions 
of association. This is the only way apparent by which 
memories or impressions made in one form of vibration 
could be aroused by those constructed of another form. 
With complete distinctness there could be no helpful 
association of ideas ; there must to some extent be an over- 
lapping. 

Mechanism of Impressions 

We may regard as the first step in the mechanism of 
impressions, the development of the current of nerve force 
that probably throughout life is continuously making the 
circuits formed by the outgoing and incoming axons, the 
neurons and other intervening tissues. This current of 
itself doubtless arouses a vague, indefinite consciousness, 
or causes consciousness to be more alert during waking 
hours, so as to produce a vague form of mental activity 
that probably would be perceived and in a sense realized 
by us, even though we may never have experienced a 
sensation. Next there may be supposed to follow, a 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 83 

character of change producing what might be called arti- 
culate modifications, and due to the circuit currents 
becoming freighted with sensations and various combina- 
tions of sensations. 

These modifications must depend upon the presence of 
some kind of material element in which they take place, 
as already more than once indicated, whether this element 
consists of molecule, atom, ion, or electron; for it is not 
conceivable that permanent or stable forms or groupings 
can be perpetuated in a field of pure force, that is, a field 
of force that is isolated and localized in otherwise empty 
space. Vibrations originate with ponderable matter, 
and manifest themselves as energy when they impinge upon 
ponderable matter or are resisted by it, but they do not 
tarry in the imponderable ether. 

When we gaze upon a cloud that is clinging to a moun- 
tain peak, while the wind about it moves constantly on, we 
may feel sure that the cloud is not persistently constituted 
of the same identical elements, but that it is all the time 
reforming out of the mist or watery vapor that has been 
borne up over the mountain crest till it has reached the 
point of condensation. So also when we find an eddy in 
a stream of water, ever drifting away and ever reforming, 
we will seek not mistakenly for some fixed and firm mass 
stationary in the stream as the cause of the eddy. 

So thought is not a thing stationary, but the continuous 
product of a movement of nerve force passing from and 
over ponderable particles, infinitely small it may be, but 
still particles that we recognize as solid or ponderable. 

Thought being therefore such an emanation and not a 
fixed thing, the thought of this moment is never the thought 
of the moment before, any more than the cloud clinging to 
the mountain peak this instant, is composed of the same 
watery vapor that constituted the one of the instant gone 



84 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

by; or any more than the eddy that flows away from the 
sunken snag at noon to-day consists of the same water that 
constituted the eddy of yesternoon. Thought, then, is 
such a cloud stream, or such a chain of eddies, that is 
constantly being renewed and constantly flowing away, 
and that continues until the molecular mechanism on 
which it depends is radically changed or obliterated. 

Changes in Thought Forms 

Thought seems to find its source of modification of 
form in modifications of its material mould or guide. We 
might alter the cloud effect in our example by changing the 
form of the peak to which it clings, as we might alter the 
form of our eddy by changing the obstruction that deter- 
mines it. 

In forms of growth that in their appearance and nature 
are closer to mind than are the examples given in illustra- 
tion, we may find examples of a permanent change of 
product arising from subtle modifications of the matrix 
out of which they grow. Thus, as already mentioned, if a 
deer's horn be broken off while yet in the velvet, in all 
the subsequent years of the deer's life, only a deformed 
horn will grow in the place of the one broken, and this 
notwithstanding the horn is only the outgrowth of the 
external layer of the skin, and destined to be shed every 
year. Likewise if the matrix of the finger nail is injured, 
a deformed nail grows from it ever afterwards. 

As a supposed illustration of the method of the revival 
and reinvigoration of vibrations which have constituted 
the elements of past thought or other outcome of mental 
activity, let us conceive that a stream of sense-waves 
derived from any of the organs of sense, reaches the senso- 
rium and there falls in with a group of homogeneous waves 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 85 

that have been for some time present, but have become too 
feeble or too monotonous in their movements to arouse 
consciousness; or that having been transformed into the 
common material of thought in separate neurons, these 
newly arrived waves find and fall in with such kindred. 
The result will be that the idea or other thought product 
that these weakened waves once constituted will again 
be revived in consciousness and brought into the sphere of 
its recognition. 

When the vibrations that occasion such revival come 
fresh from without, the predominance in potency may be 
either with the sets of vibrations already in the neurons, 
or with the newly arriving ones. And just in proportion 
as such predominance may be greater with the one set 
than the other, that set will be recognized by consciousness 
as constituting or most largely constituting the new idea 
or other outcome of mentation. 

Thus if the sets or groups of undulations already present 
in the neurons predominate to a controlling degree, the new- 
ly arrived waves may in that case fail to be distinguished 
or separately recognized by consciousness, and as a conse- 
quence the product of the combination will appear as a 
reminiscence or recollection, which will be modified either 
sensibly or insensibly by the recently arrived vibrations; 
but if, on the other hand, the newly arrived vibrations 
distinctly predominate, a seemingly new idea or other men- 
tal product will be formed which will, however, be more or 
less dimly colored or tinted by the fading undulations of 
the old idea already become quiescent in the circuit of the 
neurons. 

Under such conditions the vanishing undulations, so- 
called, may reach and impress consciousness as half recog- 
nized old acquaintances, arousing a flood of vague feelings 
or impressions, and suggesting associations in places far 



86 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

away, or incidents of the long forgotten past, and these will 
be incorporated with the new idea. As expressed by Dar- 
win when ascribing this feeling to inheritance from remote 
ancestral forms, "Through the dim shadows of the mental 
images thus formed, there will often flicker glimpses as of 
life and scenes in another world or another state of exis- 
ence." Or, as Richter says of music, they lead us into 
communion with things we have not seen and yet shall not 
see. Or yet again, they point to the "light that never was 
on land or sea." 

Analogies of Thought 

More than upon aught else, we are compelled to depend 
upon analogies between the operation of mental and physi- 
cal forces for the elucidation of mental activities. Such 
an analogy, drawn from a practical illustration of the 
laws of sound, may serve in some measure to throw light 
upon the manner in which vibrations from without, of the 
same nature as those supposed to exist within the brain as 
the residue of former vibrations, can enable such vibrations 
to arouse consciousness, and manifest themselves as modi- 
fied memories. 

It is a recognized law of accoustics that the multiplication 
of a sound of a given intensity does not affect its loudness. 
That is to say, that a sound produced by many voices 
will carry no farther than when produced by one. Yet 
the sound of many voices combined can be heard farther 
than one though that one be as loud as the loudest of those 
combined. A single bee may be buzzing near us and not 
be heard, but if another or others join it in the same sit- 
uation, together they may produce a distinctly audible 
noise. Likewise, raindrops that singly could be heard at a 
distance of but a few feet, may be multiplied until they 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 87 

can be heard falling on the leaves of a forest many hundreds 
of yards away. 

So it may be with the undulations that at the seat of con- 
sciousness have become the record of events, the memory 
of things. With the lapse of time they have been steadi- 
ly subsiding, steadily becoming less and less vivid, less and 
less distinct, until they have settled down into that quiet 
where they bid fair to remain forever, beyond the utmost 
grasp or reach of consciousness. 

But sight or hearing or taste or some less specialized 
sense, brings in from without a group of kindred waves, 
or within the halls of the neurons new couples are formed 
among the participants in the intricate mazes of the never- 
ending dance, or many pairs or groups may join in noisy 
promenade. So strengthened they force the ears of 
consciousness to listen to their message; and thus ideas 
and emotions with other furniture of memory, till then in 
abeyance and drowsy almost to final sleep, are made to 
reappear on the open arena of mental activities. 

These welcome intruders, these re-enforcing vibrations, 
do not need to be absolutely identical in nature and charac- 
ter with the elements of the thoughts they arouse, though 
as already shown, they must be closely related. 

If it happen that memory waves in the neurons are fad- 
ing and must depend on sense waves from without to revive 
them, it would seem that they need to accept the aid of 
vibrations slightly different from themselves, otherwise 
re-enforcement or assistance would be scant, and compara- 
tively few of the fading ideas would receive it. If the 
memory waves in the brain, in cases of spontaneous 
association, could be reenforced only by other waves of 
exactly and identically the same character, the arousing of 
memories that depend upon associations of this nature and 
upon this class of excitations, would well-nigh cease; for 



88 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

since impressions are for the most part made successively, 
nearly all memory vibrations must differ in the time ele- 
ment at least; that is they must be made one after the 
other. 

But whether the renewed thought or revived idea comes 
again into consciousness by aid from without or within, it 
may again be said, it never remains the same. It is no 
more possible to think the same thought twice, or feel the 
same emotion twice than to see the same cloud twice 
journeying across the sky, or the same smoke-curl twice 
floating through the air in identical substance and form. 

Growth of Ideas 

A thread, a needle and a woman's deft fingers, and then 
the filmy lace whose beauty is a marvel and whose complex- 
ity and intricacy suggest a mystery. A simple stitch 
begins it, by a simple stitch it progresses, and by a simple 
stitch the finishing touch is given. So with the idea, the 
concept, the emotion, or other thought-structure, however 
complex it may be. A simple vibration begins it, by simple 
vibrations it progresses, and by simple vibrations the 
final touch is given that brings it to completion. The 
progress of its development when once well understood, 
must prove to be simple. Its construction must be 
achieved by simple steps and with simple elements. 

Uniformity of Thought Products 

It is hardly to be questioned that if the sense organs 
of all individuals are of one nature, sense vibrations must 
perpetuate the record in all minds in a practically identical 
manner and form. Therefore, all obvious attributes of an 
object must produce a similar impression on every mind 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 89 

insofar as such attributes are concerned or involved in the 
impression, other things being equal; for we have proceeded 
on the assumption that forces of the same nature have 
everywhere built up both mind and body. 

It follows also that if all impression is made upon the 
mind ultimately by the same elements, then expression 
ought to be the same with all living things, and especially 
ought language to be everywhere the same; and more 
particularly should this be the case with speech among 
human beings. In that case also what is known as onoma- 
topoiea, in which the sound of the word should to all 
minds alike suggest its meaning, ought to be the rule and 
not the exception. And it is possibly true that in its 
deeper significance, onomatopoiea or word-picturing will 
be found to be universal. 

Can we not by a careful search and analysis find a 
common basis for the interpretation of all languages, and a 
key, as well, for the translation of words into ideas; and 
likewise the converse of this process? If the vibration 
theory holds, this is to be accomplished by conceiving 
words and ideas to be resolved into the vibrations that 
constitute their primary elements. 

Just as we found that the short, light steps of soldiers 
marching to music over a bridge are eventually combined 
into the ample, possibly destructive vibrations, involving 
the entire bridge, just as the ripplings on a sheet of water, 
due to the soft fanning of a breeze may eventually become 
the wild wave still combining, still infolding, hidden but 
not lost or destroyed, all the tiny ripples that at the first 
onl u dimpled the water with their gentle smiling, so also 
may all language and all expressive movement, both mental 
and physical, be but an aggregate of the still implicate 
vibrations that produced them, and which in the neurons 
constitute the record of experiences. These primary 



90 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

vibrations are the elements into which all impressions may 
be translated in the mind, and out of which all expression 
is wrought, whether that expression be by movement, look 
or word. 

It is in this way that direct designations, such as the 
names of objects, although ever so multifarious and possess- 
ing apparently no suggestive character or no associating 
link between name and property or quality, will yet call 
up the same mental image in different minds. 

We may select for illustration the name of any widely 
familiar object, such for example as the word, "horse." 
The uttering of the word," horse," in any language or 
dialect spoken among men will at once suggest an individ- 
ual image of a horse to those who speak that language or 
dialect, though it may be that not one of all the names is a 
thought-word, or a peculiarly self-explaining word, in the 
right sense of the term. 

This rule applies also to all words that are not obviously 
descriptive or inherently suggestive, but which may yet 
call up in memory definite ideas. Can it be that here is 
to be found the one language into which all others may be 
translated? 

Or can it be maintained that there is in the nature of 
things one fundamental language, perfectly true and ex- 
pressive in which thought and thing, sense reports and 
spoken or acted word are not only related but mutually 
interpretive? Is there in nature around us or anywhere 
one simple, expressive tongue into which all others are 
translated in the clearing-house of the mind, the "una 
lingua celestibus?" 

But how can this unification be attained? Where and 
in what way can all languages be interpreted into one? 
The nearest and the only common meeting-place to which 
ideas, words, and expressive movements can be traced is 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 91 

in the vibrations of the nerve energy in the neurons, and 
from that simple element they all primarily spring. 

It is most likely that the undulations which in the mind 
form the sense-derived image of an object, enter there 
into groupings or combinations with the undulations that 
constitute every other attribute or name that such object 
is conceived to have acquired; and that the mental concept 
or idea of the object grows with the addition of every new 
name or attribute. 

Thus, though as said before, we may designate an object 
such as a horse, by a hundred different names, each of 
such names, whether read or heard or made out by the 
touch as is the case with the blind, will to one who knows 
its meaning, form a part of the complex idea or notion of a 
horse, just as will the neighing or hoof or mane, or any 
other part or attribute. And sensed undulations produced 
by any one of these objects or proceeding from any one of 
them, will call up in consciousness the idea of a horse. 

And furthermore, any attribute pertaining to the idea 
or any element of it as it exists in the mind is calculated, 
when drawn into the sphere of consciousness, to summon 
the whole complex idea with it. Every attribute then 
becomes a handle by means of which the idea in all its 
fullness and complexity may be summoned into conscious- 



General and Abstract Ideas 

It is doubtful if there is any other general and abstract 
idea or notion of an object than such as is formed by,or 
is due to, those vibrations which are from time to time 
marshalled before consciousness in the order of their 
number and force. The vibrations of any given kind, if 
numerous and long continued, become firmly rooted in 



92 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

and thoroughly impressed upon consciousness. On the 
contrary sparse and weak ones are merged and practically 
lost sight of. If we were accustomed to seeing horses 
invariably white, and had never heard of one of another 
color, whiteness would attach itself to every idea of a 
horse. The same would be the case with the idea of the 
saddle or bridle, if we had never seen a horse or met a 
description of one without such trappings. 

Likewise the general idea of a tree is constituted of the 
persisting vibrations with which consciousness or the 
sensorium has been most often and most forcibly, or at all 
events most effectually impressed as having proceeded 
from a tree. The general or abstract notion of a tree is 
that of a composite tree. Nor does there probably exist 
an absolutely or strictly abstract idea of a color or quality, 
any more than of an object. 

We may, for instance, have seen so many thousand 
different objects in nature, which are green during the 
season of growth, that the vibrations they have implanted 
in the brain practically neutralize all other impressions; 
or the latter are so diffused or so dim in comparison with 
the vastly more frequently recurring vibrations of green, 
that ordinarily the idea of greenness seems to be made up 
of elements apart from any object of which the color is a 
quality. But pursuing and pressing the thought, we soon 
find that the idea of greenness is based on the appearance 
of an object or objects that are green. The notion of a 
green sun or a green sky never occurs to us spontaneously. 

The Origin of Language 

There is every reason to believe that language or speech 
using these terms in their widest sense are instinctive, and 
are the product of orderly vibration groupings. It is 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 93 

furthermore most probable that children have been the 
inventors of the great majority of words found in human 
speech. 

It is matter of common observation that children freely 
invent words and often ascribe to them meanings. Later 
in life the brain becomes less prolific, and is also channel- 
ized or beaten into paths by the habitual use of a ready- 
made stock of words, and then if new words are formed, it 
must be mostly by putting together words already in stock. 

In the beginning, children, no doubt, often reveled in 
the manufacture of words, even as they now do. The vast 
majority of these words had no meaning. But now and 
then a word would be constructed, or used coincidently 
with an act, and this act would qualify the word; would 
give it a meaning. When the person who had used the 
word came to convey the meaning to another, he would 
interpret it into the act. Thus, if when he was digging 
roots, he happened to use or hear an expressive word, and 
then attempted to convey to some one an idea of what the 
word meant, he would repeat the act of digging, and thus 
convey the idea. If, however, the idea was not concrete, 
but such an abstraction as envy, for example- he might 
have a word that to him was msed coincidently with the act 
of envying, and to him might have meant envying. But 
he would be unable to explain that word to another by any 
intelligible act, and the chances would be almost infinity 
to one, against another person using the same word to him 
to express the same idea. Hence nearly all words except 
demonstrational predicatives, perished and only demon- 
strational predicatives were left to form the basis 
of all languages. 

But these words were formed instinctively. They were 
the products of vibrations given off among the neurons, 
and which primarily might have been traced to the direct- 



94 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

ing vibration of vital corpuscles employed in building up 
the organism. And thus it would follow that language, or 
speech is in its production like the outcome of all other 
vital activities and ultimately instinctive > or automatic. 

Fictitious Enlargement of the Idea 

In the light of the foregoing considerations, it is easy to 
discover the motive that actuates men in the utilization of 
fictitious elements of greatness, or of what are usually 
regarded as the outward accompaniments of greatness. 

The constant aim of those who crave adventitious gran- 
deur is to enlarge the idea of themselves in the minds of 
others, and by reflection, in their own. "Fine feathers 
make fine birds," is a very old and a very true proverb, 
insofar as it relates to the popular estimate of greatness. 

Accordingly, men who occupy positions which they are 
persuaded ought to be regarded as ennobling or exalted 
are wont to affect such bearing, attitudes, voice, dress and 
general deportment as men are apt to associate with their 
notions of greatness. These borrowed elements enlarge 
the idea of the rank of people so situated, in the minds of 
others, and usually in their own minds. This class often 
incline to rumbling, orotund monotones, such as one natur- 
ally inclines to employ when looking down on an audience 
from above while making an address. 

Indeed the relaxation of the vocal cords, voluntarily 
effected by the most part of the clergy and their imitators, 
in the effort to produce the so-called "holy tone," often 
gives rise to a special diseased condition of the vocal organs 
known as, "preachers' sorethroat." 

Wherever it happens that the multitude is especially 
backward in intelligence, open-mouthed with blank 
credulity and dominated with eager expectation, displays 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 95 

of gaudy and glittering trappings supply an accessory in 
the way of conferring fictitious greatness by no means to 
be despised. Tinsel, cochineal and aniline prove to be 
wonderfully efficient contributors to the estimate of gran- 
deur as it exists in the popular appreciation. 

In the eyes of the unreasoning multitude,it often happens 
that glittering tinsel, bejeweled and bespangled headgear 
together with pompous, imposing stride, exact a higher 
appreciation and a humbler homage than all the exalted 
qualities of the head and heart man ever yet has been 
known to possess. If to these acquirements can be added 
gorgeous trailing robes, handed down as a legacy from the 
ages when our savage ancestors hung from their shoulders 
their only garment made perhaps from the undressed 
skins of beasts, the one so favored is well on his way to the 
making of a demigod. 

The ecclesiastical or civil dignitary, with trailing gown 
bedecked with gaudy, brilliant colors, with glittering 
crown and movements of pompous stride, is traveling 
exactly the same path as the strutting savage adorned with 
strips of gaudily colored cloth and fantastic headgear. All 
alike are seeking to enlarge the idea of their personality 
in the minds of beholders, by means of vibrations borrowed 
from extraneous objects striking and imposing in effect. 

Time Elements in Impressions 

In harmony with the undulatory theory of mind and 
form, is also the fact that the tenacity with which the mind 
holds impressions made upon it bears a direct relation, 
other things being equal, to the length of time the vibrat- 
ions from a given source may have continued to play upon 
the seat of consciousness. 

Thus after having suffered from certain forms of fever, 



96 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

such for instance as rheumatism, men have been known to 
have let slip from memory all knowledge or remembrance 
of the impressions of occurrences experienced during the 
period just previous to the attack of illness. Similarly 
those who have suffered from concussion of the brain, or a 
stroke of apoplexy will often be found to have forgotten 
impressions made upon the mind at a date just anterior 
to the occurrence, though such will be less the case in 
proportion as such impressions may have been made in a 
vigorous manner. 

The undulations in these cases moving in and among the 
neurons, not having had time to form a sufficient number 
of acquaintances, so to say, found no friendly companions 
to wake them after the shock and aid them in regaining the 
recognition of consciousness. 

Apparent Shortness of Time 

In a similar way, by a converse process, we may be able 
to account for the seeming shortness of the periods of time 
embraced in our remembered experience. All the long 
years of life that is past, however slowly they may have 
seemed to drag in the passing, appear in memory but as 
yesterday. "Time flies" is an adage universally current; 
but it is impressed far more in the retrospect than in the 
actual experience. In truth, time itself, like space, gives 
off no vibrations. No force is exerted by it. No energy 
proceeds from it. Purely as time and space, considered 
absolutely, these terms constitute no idea; the mind takes 
no cognizance of them. 

The only way in which they can enter into the formation 
or production of ideas is by constituting intervals in 
consciousness among occurrences or acts, or among sub- 
stantive objects as related to each other. They are there- 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 97 

fore merely the relations of such things as can be the 
subject of thought. 

These intervals that serve to show the relations of 
events, are overshadowed and lost sight of in the crowding 
of experiences in memory. The reason or the cause of 
the apparent shortness of past time, seems to be, that the 
undulations which in the brain constitute the record, the 
memory of each hour, are entwined with and kept alive by 
those of the hours that follow; the more so as passing expe- 
rience may be monotonous, and the undulations that 
constitute their record are more nearly alike in character. 

It is thus that closely united or blended together in 
memory, years are made to become as days, and weeks as 
moments. We call time short, in part at least, because it 
is made to seem so by the mechanism of memory. It is in 
this way that those who have been associated with us 
from childhood seem never to grow old. The brother or 
the sister though silver-crowned and bowed with age, is the 
brother or the sister of the play place still; and venerable 
companions of wedded life, even though trembling on the 
borders of the undiscovered land, or tottering down the 
hill of life together are still the one to the other, the manly 
groom and the radiant bride bedecked but not adorned, 
with orange blossoms at the altar. 

The Lagging of Memory in Dreams 

A further argument favoring the view of the progressive 
slowing and final obliteration of the vibrations that con- 
stitute memory, may be drawn from the tendency of 
seemingly forgotten events to recur in dreams; though this 
may be susceptible of a different interpretation. 

It is a peculiar feature of dreams that altered circum- 
stances and conditions are seldom realized in them until 



98 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

after a considerable time has elapsed subsequent to the 
change. The scenes that appear in our dreams when we 
have made a change of residence for instance, are, as a rule, 
for a considerable period of time after the change, almost 
invariably laid at the place of our former residence, and 
crowded with misty but familiar incidents and features. 

It not rarely happens that on returning to visit former 
haunts, and especially those of childhood days, after a long 
absence, we are surprised to find scenes that we recognize 
as having oftimes, more or less dimly obtruded themselves 
into our dreams, or as having given these dreams their 
settings; scenes which yet in our waking hours seemed to 
have wholly disappeared from conscious memory. An 
interesting example of the principle is to be found in 
Milton's description of the visits of his dead wife to his 
bedside in his dreams. 

This character of experience may be accounted for in 
part at least upon the assumption that nearly all motion 
and movement both about and within us while we sleep, 
are, as a rule, slower than those of the waking hours and the 
day. The breathing is slower, the heart beat is slower; and 
beside the general stillness that surrounds us, the senses are 
closed to excitations from without, so that the memory 
waves of the past, undisturbed by fresh undulations, have 
freer play upon the half awakened consciousness. 

Night even without sleep brings far away memories; 
and few indeed are they who may not repeat with the poet : 

"Oft in the stilly night, 

Ere slumber's chains have bound me, 

Fond memory brings the light 

Of other days around me." 

We seldom realize in dreams, till after the laspse of 
considerable time, the fact of a great calamity that may 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 99 

have occurred in our personal experience. Bitterly as the 
waking hours may be haunted by the memory of a deso- 
lating loss, a stinging sin or a crushing sorrow whose only 
mercy is that experience teaches that it must pass away or 
be softened by time, we may still lie down to pleasant 
dreams; may still in drowsy respite borrow glad moments 
from the happy past; and then on waking to a troubled 
realization of the painful truth, we fain would persuade 
ourselves that the truth is itself the dream. 

Nowhere does this principle seem to have received a 
more fitting or truthful portrayal than in that most weird 
and thrilling poetic creation "The Raven." The half 
revealed theme of that marvelous flame of inspiration 
clipped from the chandelier of resplendent genius, seems 
to be the imaging forth of the method in which the painful 
and troublous occurrences of our waking hours enter into 
the occupancy and possession of our dreams. Well 
chosen is the vision and well wrought the poet's description, 
to symbolize and portray the experience imposed by some 
gnawing sin or searching sorrow that has hung like a pall 
over the hours of waking, and at last with raven aspect has 
come stalking in our dreams into the halls of memory, 
thrusting its beak into the heart, while fated by and by to 
gather all the soul into its never-lifting shadow. 

Still another feature of dreams tends to prove and find 
a colorable explanation in a vibratory theory of mind and 
form, namely: their character of riotousness or inconsis- 
ency. In dreams the censorship of judgment, the whip of 
propriety and consistency, seems to be withdrawn, and 
thought and imagination then run wild. 

During waking hours recent or secondary vibrations 
operate in such a way as to put clothes on the naked mental 
images and render them presentable in the courts of con- 
ventional thought. This as elsewhere indicated, bears a 



100 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

resemblance to the rendering of things agreeable by 
custom which are ordinarily not so: such a result being 
accomplished by borrowing vibrations from agreeable 
sources. At all events the primary or more or less instinct- 
ive and natural fancies or thoughts are kept in order and 
under discipline by the more newly arrived vibrations. In 
sleep the more recently arrived influences are withdrawn, 
and the master of proprieties being away, there spring up 
all manner of confusion and all sorts of grotesque and 
incongruous behavior. 

It is possbile, however, and even probable, that the final 
outcome of all the scattered and seemingly incongruous 
movement of the thoughts in dreams is one of ultimate 
order. It often happens that the grain of the wood of a 
tree grows tangled and gnarled in every direction, and yet 
the result is a tree no more lacking in symmetry of form 
than its neighbors of more regular growth. 

In some way the highest symmetry of intellectual pro- 
duct is obtained by the workings of genius, which are not 
wholly unakin to dreaming. 

Undulations Illimitable 

When we consider the vast number of undulations 
required to record and perpetuate in the brain the sensa- 
tions and the sensation-products of a single day, and then 
the practically infinite extent of the product of that number 
multiplied by the number of days in an ordinary lifetime, 
the startling magnitude of the result seems at first to offer 
an insuperable difficulty in the way of conserving the 
content of memory in terms of vibration. 

The apparent difficulty will vanish, however, when the 
possible extent and rapidity of undulatory motion is taken 
into consideration, and this notwithstanding the fact that 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 101 

only a very small proportion of the vibrations of energy 
can effect the sensorium. 

In the transmission of light, the waves of the conducting 
ether are held by scientists, as we have seen, to attain a 
rapidity of 395 million millions per second, the number for 
red light, to 760 million millions per second for violet, and 
a number vastly beyond this for the transmission of chemi- 
cal or ultra-violet, which though ordinarily ultrasensible, 
can still by certain means be brought within the purview of 
the senses. To these are to be added the large class of the 
newly discovered vibrations of radio-activity, and possibly 
the infinitely more rapid and subtle gravity vibrations, 
the parent of them all; and all of which may be traveling 
at the same moment through any given particle of ether. 
Yet utterly inconceivably great as these numbers may seem 
they constitute but an infinitesimal part of the vibrations 
that can take place in any particle of ether at one and the 
same moment of time. 

But we may go further. Let us conceive the visible 
universe to consist of a hollow sphere, and every one of its 
twinkling stars to be a luminous eye giving out light and at 
the same time gazing at its fellow on the opposite side of 
the sphere,and directly through its central particle of ether. 
For a ray of violet light that central ether particle must 
dance in oscillations of 760 million millions per second for 
each one, or at most for each couple of these starry eyes. 
And this in but one direction on a single line, and that too 
for only a single variety of light. 

Yet between these facing stars, and still exactly in the 
same line, this central ether particle must at the same 
moment keep further step to the vibrations of at least 
eleven other varieties of light, or twelve if the ultraviolet 
be included, with vibrations ranging from 395 million 
millions to 880 million millions per second. 



102 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

Again we may take two other such sparkling eyes half 
way around the vault from these and looking at each other 
through this same central ether particle. This particle 
must now, while still abating nothing of its former motion, 
vibrate in a directly transverse way with the same rapidity 
and with the same multiple system as before. 

Yet even all this can scarcely be called a beginning. 
These systems of vibrations must be repeated perhaps a 
hundred million times to embrace the entire host of twink- 
ling suns that bestud the emypyrean, and that too for the 
same moment of time. 

And the end is not yet; for multiplied million -fold more 
of these glittering eyes than now appear, might bestud the 
limitless vault, and still each at the same moment of time 
look upon its opposite through this unspeakably busy 
particle of ether placed at the crossing of all the ways. 

Similarly then at the seat of consciousness, or in the 
organ of mind, each atom or corpuscle, and scarcely less 
each complex molecule may by its infinite possible undu- 
ations be employed at one and the same time in a scarcely 
smaller number of sensations, thoughts, ideas, emotions, 
and other outcome of mental activity. 

Our sense of hearing as already indicated does not take 
cognizance of undulations of greater frequency than forty- 
two or forty -three thousand per second. The rate and 
range of vibrations that reach the sensorium through the 
sense of taste have not been ascertained, nor have those of 
touch, but the presumption is that they are vastly more 
limited than those received through vision. 

Sight ranges in its power of recognition, as already stated 
from 395 to 760 million millions of vibrations per second. 
But it is more than likely that even within these limits, 
there are vast numbers of vibrations that make no con- 
scious impression on the senses. The vibrations of which 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 103 

the other senses may be made cognizant are comparatively 
slow. 

If then it be true that memory actually consists of vibra- 
tions, there would seem to be a sufficiency of cells and mole- 
cules in the most imperfectly equipped of normal human 
brains to keep a record of at least all the valuable impres- 
sions, not only of any individual for the period of his own 
life, but of those of all of his ancestry, back to the advent 
of human life on the earth; not to mention the illimitable 
numbers of corpuscles or electrons that may be present in 
the brain functioning in the mechanism of memory, but as 
yet unapprehended. 

Of the Nature of Ideas 

This brings us to a point in our discussion where a more 
extensive and detailed definition or explanation is required 
for certain terms already employed, in order that we may 
the more intelligently consider the nature of the manifes- 
tations that characterize mental activities in their various 
relations, and constitute the category of the functions of 
the nerve elements commonly embraced in the term, mind. 
These manifestations we have been considering as present- 
ing themselves under the names of sensations, ideas, 
emotions and other like affections, together with their 
various interrelations. A closer analysis of some of these 
will now be undertaken. 

It has already been set forth as one of the contentions in 
the vibratory theory of mind that sensations, perceptions, 
ideas and emotions, together with all other outcome of 
mental activity whatever are essentially one, and that they 
depend for their variety upon the different character of 
vibrations and vibration groupings that play upon the 
seat of consciousness, or the repositories of the subcon- 
scious, and also upon the order and intensity of such play. 



104 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

This is not to say, however, that all,or even more than an 
infinitesimal part of such groups and combinations are 
ever made known to consciousness. Furthermore the 
great majority, if not all the groups so made known, are 
first formed in the subconscious. 

As already indicated, it is the contention of the theory 
that an idea is not exclusively a visual image, picture or 
form, nor an image such as might be framed out of impress- 
ions derived through any single one of the senses. It is 
rather a group of interacting vibrations derived through 
several or all the senses. And all these vibrations of what- 
ever kind or source must ultimately be transformable into 
one class of vibrations, in order that they may be combined 
together into the orderly products of mentation. It is 
obvious also that since thought-vibrations like all others 
must begin with and be given off from ponderable cor- 
puscles, and since these corpuscles necessarily have posi- 
tion, the basic framework of the idea must have form. 

If a particular idea or sensation derived through one of 
the senses is found to have the cast of another, say an 
idea derived from sound is found to have a color cast, or 
the converse, it must be either that the vibrations of hear- 
ing and those of sight have been translated in the neurons, 
the one into the other, or else that all have been trans- 
formed into a different but common character of undula- 
tion. Of these alternative views, the latter would seem to 
be the most reasonable. All vibrant groups from what- 
ever source derived must be inter-translatable. This 
feature of the subject will be recurred to when we come to 
treat of the nature of sympathy. 

We have previously considered how it may be that vibra- 
tions that reach the brain through various avenues, in the 
form of sensations, might build up ideas into very complex 
structures, and clothe them about with a great diversity 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 105 

of accessories. But before that stage is reached many 
distinct changes and modifications must have taken place 
in the groupings of these undulations. A mere sensation 
must be without form or shape to the apprehension of 
consciousness. It is simply the ring of the door-bell, and 
it may be anybody's ring. 

But when numbers of them begin to play upon conscious- 
ness in definite order and to join others of like character 
in order to form groups and arrays, they then become per- 
ceptions or other mentation-products and should no longer 
be denominated sensations. 

When sensations combine to give rise to an image in the 
organ of mind, whether such image is a visual form, that is, 
one derived through the sense of sight, or one derived from 
the senses other than sight, or a modification or derivative 
of all of these, we call this image properly an idea. 

An idea then may be defined as such a grouping of sense 
waves or of their modifications as is capable of producin g 
in consciousness a form of suggestive representation corres- 
ponding to an external thing, that is, a thing external to 
consciousness. It is not at all to be doubted that among 
the neurons such groupings are to be found in numbers 
practically infinite, only a few of them, however, being at 
any one time brought into consciousness. The vas 
majority of them remain persistently in the subconscious 

Emotions 

An emotion is simply an idea into the complex structure 
of which has been woven a greater or less number of nerve 
vibrations of the class that otherwise is usually employed in 
any kind of expressive movement. This movement may 
be such only as is manifested by obvious muscular changes 
of position, or by a disturbance of any of the functions of 
the body, such as circulation, breathing or gland secretion. 



106 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

In short, an emotion is an idea plus any kind or degree of 
involuntary movement associated with it and caused by 
it. Hence the term, "emotion," which signifies a moving 
out. 

gjThere are those, however, who maintain that every 
idea is accompanied by and correlated with a certain 
quantity of muscular movement, and the contrary is not 
easy of demonstration. In the beginning of embryonic 
life, muscle and nerve or those placques that are destined 
to be developed into muscle and nerve respectively, are so 
intimately associated in the process of development that 
they are almost indistinguishable the one from the other. 

And even after the most complete differentiation to 
which they ever attain, muscle can supply its own contract- 
ing and relaxing impulse. It can probably regulate also 
its own rhythm. On the other hand, neurons and probably 
axons in their most mature stage may still retain the mus- 
cular faculty of amoebic movement. Every idea, there- 
fore, owing to the kinship of muscle and nerve, may be in 
some degree associated with muscular movement, even 
if so slight that the fact is in most cases not discerned. 
And possibly muscles have a shadowy power of thought 
and a shadowy consciousness. 

If the foregoing contention be true, an idea differs from 
an emotion only in degree; an emotion being nothing more 
than an idea of larger growth or greater expansion, and 
agreeable or disagreeable, according as it corresponds in 
a broad sense of the term, with the well-being of the indi- 
vidual, or the opposite. 

Nature of Association 

At this point, in view of the deep obscurity that rests on 
the physical processes concerned in the association of 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 107 

thoughts, ideas, and the like, we may venture to invoke 
fancy or imagination to gain some sort of picture or scheme 
of the play of forces that in the brain and in its neurons, 
most likely perpetuates the elements of mentation, and 
when need be, marshals them in consciousness. It seems 
also that more or less illustrative examples can be found in 
the appearance presented by material substances when 
undergoing various transformations. 

Thus the flitting shadow lines across the surface of 
mother liquors when these are active in precipitating 
crystals; and what is technically known as, "forked or 
branched lightning," darting across the clouds in the 
tropics; or the movement of participants in certain com- 
plex dances, may offer something analogous to the prob- 
able plan of movement of the impulses tnat arouse dor- 
mant impressions and reproduce them with their various 
relations in consciousness. 

Let us suppose, for example, that in one or more of the 
molecules of a neuron, or in a neuron of one or more con- 
nected groups are stored the vibrations that stand for red. 
These vibrations may have been derived from a rose, a 
crimson drop of blood, or a sunset, and every one of them 
must have been modified by coming within the influences 
of vibrations proceeding from associated and similar 
objects either since or at the time they were recorded. 

If, for example, it happens that the vibrations have been 
received from a rose, then the leaves of the bush, some 
relations of the time or space element, or any other of 
hundreds of associated features may have mingled their 
vibrations together, and these mutually modified make up 
in memory the assemblage known as the idea of a rose, in 
which, however, red predominates. 

A fresh object is now presented whose vibrations like- 
wise enter into the impressions made on consciousness 



108 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

that belong to the order of red, or whose predominant 
force is of the nature of red. All at once the reenforced 
vibrations will arouse in consciousness the idea of some red 
object, say of this rose, which was slumbering in the memo- 
ry. And with the vibrations which the awakened idea of 
the rose imparted will come such as accompanied those of 
the rose in the process of the original impression, and which 
were associated with them in time and position. 

In this way that part of the complex idea corresponding 
to the leaf may be made to appear; then the thorn followed 
by other accessories, one after another, the vibrations 
coming into consciousness in the order of the facility of 
their reinforcement. Or the troop of incoming vibrations 
may mostly have the cast of the sunset, and then stored 
vibrations circling or lingering in and among the neurons 
and constituting the record of a sunset previously observed 
will reveal themselves to consciousness, and bring with 
them, one after another, such other vibrations as enter 
into related ideas, or such as form connecting links between 
the principal idea and its various subsidiary groups. 

It may then be that to a stranger in a strange land the 
association will call up the idea of a faraway home, or a 
distant friend, who in times past has joined him in watch- 
ing the fading glow of the setting sun. 

As the electric current flits along over tropic clouds, 
shunting here and dividing there, so the memory-waking 
current travels where the pathway is easiest, and stirs 
into renewed activity the subtle corpuscles whose undula- 
tions are most like its own. 

An Emotion Analyzed 

A detailed schematic presentation of the process of 
building up an emotion from an idea, with the incident 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 109 

marring, crippling, or enriching which it may sustain, may 
serve to supply a clearer understanding of what it is here 
sought to impress. 

Let us suppose one to be in possession of an object, even 
though indifferent or commonplace, that happens to be of 
an agreeable character. Say that this object is a painting, 
and further that the undulations that go to make up its 
mental image or idea have met with a favoring response in 
consciousness. He loses that painting or it is destroyed. 
At once he feels that there exists an unpleasant void or 
vacancy in the assembly of mental experiences of which its 
possession has formed a part. There is a vacant seat by 
the hearth-stone; an empty chair at the table in the feast 
of memories. Something is felt to be lacking, for a time at 
least, in the way of accustomed pleasant influences. The 
painting can no longer send the required pleasant undula- 
tions to reenforce its agreeable image already recorded in 
the mind. Thereupon a more or less disagreeable mental 
experience results, namely: the presence and influence 
of the blemished, maimed or otherwise impaired idea; and 
in that mildly crippled state the experience may be laid 
away on the shelves of memory. The power to realize such 
experiences is inherent and instinctive ; the babe of a week 
may possess it. 

Later, although the record of this experience may seem- 
ingly have been lost, there comes to one in the course of 
events, a large number of similar experiences. Very 
many of such records having been connected and stored 
away together, by reason of being constituted of undula- 
tions common to large groups of associated neurons, enter 
habitually into the make-up of one's state of mind. More 
and more with each new accession, the undulations which 
constitute the marred and crippled ideas overflow into the 
motor neurons, always leaving in their wake traces of their 
devastation. 



110 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

And thus in the secret storehouse of memory are gathered 
and crowded the crippled and deformed groups handed 
down from the past, and projected now and then into 
consciousness. Being again and again thus re-enforced, 
stress is added to stress, until at last some new wound, 
some fresh hurt, tears away the bonds of restraint, and 
permits the combined and pent up energy to break forth 
like the winds from the cave of Aeolus, in an overwhelm- 
ing storm of emotion. 

We have some one very dear to us — say a mother — 
whose idea has been linked and enlaced with our inmost 
being by innumerable agreeable acts of kindly care, b 
smiles of approving sympathy, by tears of pity, and beam- 
ing looks of love, until an affectionate response has taken 
deep root in all the sources of expressive movement. A 
thrill comes unbidden even if only the name is spoken. It 
comes to pass that we lose our mother in such a way as 
that our experiences impress us with the assurance that 
the loss will be for long, and the void she has left will be 
slow to fill. She is claimed by death. 

We have of course never before known what it is to lose 
a mother, nor directly realized the situation, yet all at 
once we are overwhelmed with the deepest grief. Evident- 
ly this grief is produced only indirectly by the loss of our 
mother. That was but the exciting cause; for how could 
we feel to grieve so bitterly for that of which we had never 
before had any experience. 

The primary, the potential cause of the sad and pain- 
ful feelings thus experienced is the mustering and march- 
ing forth of a train of marred and withered ideas and 
emotions that have hitherto been lingering massed in 
memory, accumulated there through all the sad partings 
and bereavements of life. 

The proof that this is the case is found in the fact that 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 111 

nearly if not identically the same effect might have been 
produced by a false report of the death of our mother; such 
a report being sufficient to open the floodgates of marred 
and disfigured ideas and emotions. Pleasant and agree- 
able emotions, or emotions of any other variety or cast, 
may be developed in the same way. 

Initiation op Remembrances 

It is not difficult to conceive of the stirring up of memory 
vibrations by the invasion from without of others possessed 
of the same character as the original exciting agents, or 
even approximately the same. But what can be the 
exciting cause of the activities that thoughts and remi- 
niscences are constantly taking on without any apparent 
external influence? It does not avail to contend in favor 
of these activities that they seem to be spontaneous, for we 
feel that they cannot be so. 

It is well known that the initiation of such activities is 
characterized by the setting up of an electric current, and 
a flow of blood to that part of the brain that has just be- 
come active. But if the electric current and the flow of 
blood are the immediate cause of this initiation, then what 
is it that causes them? If they are merely the effects of 
thought activity they explain nothing. It seems to be a 
more reasonable explanation, as already indicated, to 
assume that the thought or memory currents never rest; 
and that when in their circuits two or more of like nature 
and character combine, they are enabled to impress con- 
sciousness by reason of the added vigor. 

The fact previously referred to that the fine brain cells 
or neurons, which ordinarily have no axons, under certain 
conditions send out or project prolongations of their own 
bodies, string their own wires so to speak, in order to 



112 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

communicate more fully with their fellows, indicates two 
things of marked interest. One of these is that the neurons 
may be informed by direct emanations through space and 
without communicating tubules, and the other that intel- 
ligent work, and possibly complete thought can be carried 
on by a single disconnected neuron. Furthermore, this 
thought the neuron seems capable and desirous of impart- 
ing, and spontaneously seeks to impart. Evidently these 
neurons would not send out their prolongations unless 
they could realize that companions were in reach capable 
of receiving their message. 

The spontaneous thought or idea, or the seemingly 
spontaneous one, must then originate in the subconscious, 
and move upon the stage of consciousness by virtue of its 
own forces. Indeed we often realize that a thought or idea 
is just about to break into consciousness; we can feel its 
approaching birth. The Will, whether it act freely and of 
its own initiative, or in response to determining forces and 
conditions, cannot call into being an idea not yet formed, 
for it cannot act upon the non-existent. 

That one idea follows another in a continuous train out 
of the subconscious is a fact of universal experience. But 
the thinker does not know what thought is next to come; 
it is apprehended only when it has appeared in conscious- 
ness. The will does not draw it out, except that by resort- 
ing to or selecting suggestive associations, the elements of 
which are already present, we can send kindred vibrations 
down into the subconscious and recall the desired word, 
idea or circumstance, when we are moved to try to recol- 
lect some past event. Yet it is not to be forgotten that 
before all else, comes the inclination, the desire. 

Ideas then in their ultimate organic origin are practically 
automatic, instinctive or intuitive. They grow up out of 
conditions in the subconscious mind that we cannot direct- 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 113 

ly control, and the ideas that reach the domain of conscious- 
ness are but an infinitesimal part of all that form or are 
formed in the subconscious. They are mere sparks from 
the anvil; mere crumbs from the feast on the groaning 
tables spread by instinct; a mere by-product, to however 
admirable a use they may sometimes be put. But this 
subject will need to be again considered when we come to 
treat of the nature of the Will. 

Memory and Consciousness Beyond the Grave 

The wide prevalence and stubborn persistence of the 
belief that memory and individual consciousness will 
continue after death entitle such belief to scientific consid- 
eration. From the viewpoint of science, it does not appear 
impossible that memory and consciousness should persist 
after death, but it does appear infinitely improbable. 

If it be true that rudiments and reversions in man are 
due to the fact that in the course of evolution he has passed 
through various lower forms of life, then these can be 
nothing else than organic memories, unless some of the 
essential ponderable elements of lower forms have been 
transmitted to us, and that too while still possessed of their 
former activites. If the gillslits and the Wolffian bodies 
of the human embryo are not based on any native or in- 
herent tendency of either the vital corpuscle or the vital 
energy, while these are entering into and controlling the 
development of the embryo, then that tendency can be 
only a bare memory that for millions of generations, it may 
be, has impressed vestigial characters upon the later orders 
in any given line of descent. 

We might here also inquire whether or not the produc- 
tion of rudiments, reversions and other vestigial traits 
necessarily involves the expenditure of energy. If such is 



114 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

the case the energy employed cannot be divided indefinite- 
ly without diminishing the size of the parts, and in this as 
in other like cases, it is not easy to perceive how even 
rudiments and reversions can be produced except by the 
constant drawing of the requisite energy from external 
sources. 

A second possibility would be that vital corpuscles are 
modified or altered in their tendencies as they pass from an 
essential or basic vital relation in connection with one class 
of animals to the same relation in other and higher animals. 
In that case it would need to be supposed that each time a 
corpuscle or a facultative group of corpuscles passes into 
essential connection with the life of any animal or vegetable 
it receives a definite impress thereby, and that such impress 
ever afterwards persists, and is not wholly obliterated 
while these corpuscles are passing into or through subse- 
quent forms. 

It would indicate also that an imperfect though distinct 
tendency is impressed upon and remains with such vital 
corpuscles, which causes them to have a disposition to 
travel routes they had traveled in previous forms of life, 
and to lead each individual embryo to make a feint at 
producing the various forms of life with which such cor- 
puscles had been previously connected. 

Still another alternative would be that vital corpuscles 
as they exist in nature's limitless reservoir, have an inherent 
tendency to pass through all the vestigial forms observed 
in the course of embryonic development in the higher 
orders of life, and that the class of corpuscles adapted to 
each successive stage of life is, in the march of evolution 
"seeded out" by the parental germ-elements provided for 
such particular stage. But this may be treated more at 
length in another connection. 

However the notion of memory, in the sense of the 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 115 

preservation and continuance into another and conscious 
life, of mental impressions acquired in this, seems wholly 
without scientific support. As before indicated, even if 
reincarnation should occur, it is infinitely improbable 
that the same elements could ever again come together 
in the formation of a new individual, a result which would 
be indispensable to a conservation or a restoration of 
individual personal memories. 

Nor is the fact that our projection into a future life, as 
individuals conscious of what has occurred in this, is 
almost universally desired, any evidence that such a life 
is to supervene upon this. Unlimited are the desires and 
hopes entertained by men that are never fulfilled or real- 
ized. Reflection readily reveals to us the artificial charac- 
ter of the foundation of any hopes we may have, of passing 
with a conscious individuality into another life beyond the 
grave. 

In the first place with the great majority of men such a 
destiny is not really and fully desired or desirable. The un- 
pleasant must be remembered with the pleasant experien- 
ces, if a future life is to correspond with prevailing desires 
and hopes. Yet how few are they who have not often had 
experiences in life whose only mercy was the confidant 
assurance that they must pass away and be measurably 
forgotten. Absolute oblivion would be preferred by the 
vast majority of men, to a life in which all painful memories 
should be ever present even though all the pleasant should 
likewise be recalled. 

Nor do the grounds of the prevailing desire bear invest- 
igation. The mother feels and proclaims that without 
the presence of her children there could be no heaven 
for her; forgetful of the fact that if her own child had 
been removed from its cradle before she first rested her 
eyes upon it, and another had been put in its place, she 



116 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

would have loved that other exactly as her own. The 
husband or the wife might have had another companion, 
if either had gone to the other school, the other church, or 
the other dance. 

It must be conceded that there is a desire, a" will to live" 
possessed by all living things both animal and vegetable, 
otherwise they would cease to live. But aside from this 
the desire for future life is almost wholly a matter of asso- 
ciation. Taken all in all it is most reasonable to conclude 
that neither science nor philosophy give any apparent 
support to the notion that conscious memory persists 
beyond the grave. 

It is true that the instinctive "will to live" as well as 
agreeable associations, as a rule, make death unwelcome. 
With a world's approval the poet wrote: 

For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey, 
This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, 
Left the warm precincts of a cheerful day, 
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind? 

Last night we enjoyed a sound oblivious sleep and to-day 
we do not regret it. The rather, we look forward with 
pleasure to a repetition of it to-night. We likewise know 
that in some form we have been in existence from all 
eternity, yet except for a few recent years all experience 
of that limitless period lies buried in oblivion. But who 
regrets not having been born sooner? Most men would 
preferably have come later on the scene of life and later in 
the world's history. If then we have existed through an 
eternal blank in the past without regret, why should we 
look forward with dread to an eternal sleep in the future? 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 117 



Sympathy and Suggestion 

The phenomena of sympathy and suggestion, which are 
closely related in their nature, also find a plausible explana- 
tion in the undulatory theory of mind. The amount of 
brainwork that is consciously performed, as already indi- 
cated, dwindles into nothingness when compared with the 
work that is carried on unconsciously or sub-consciously. 

Since, as we have learned, there is a constant tendency 
of the energy of ideas to flow over into muscular movement, 
and thus become emotions; and that emotions consist of 
ideas combined with distinct physical movements, we risk 
little in assuming that muscular movement of every kind 
is a correlate or metamorphosis of thought or thought-stuff 
either conscious or unconscious. Indeed a correlation of 
this kind is a long established fact of physiology. 

The example of the slight vibrations caused by troops of 
soldiers marching over a bridge while keeping time to music 
being transformed into a dangerous swaying of the bridge ; 
and the example of the ripples on the surface of the ocean 
being merged into great waves under a continuous wind, 
may be utilized again to show how it is that diminutive 
vibrations may be built up into others of greater magnitude 
and which are, in all probability, multiples of the smaller 
ones. 

To the foregoing illustrations might be added still 
another, though it must be confessed that it rests on a basis 
in a high degree hypothetical. The support referred to is 
found in the possibility that the vibrations manifested in 
the form of heat, light, electricity and the like, communica- 
ted to the ether by the motions of the traditionally recog- 
nized coarse atoms of matter, are in reality compounded of 
the finer vibrations of the electrons now held to be the 
ultimate elements of such atoms. 



118 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

It does not appear to be any more impossible or unrea- 
sonable that the vibrations of the electrons should be 
changed or combined into the motion of the coarser atoms, 
than that the tremblings of a bridge due to the rhythmic 
tramp of soldiers should be combined into the destructive 
oscillations of the bridge. 

And though we may have met with no example of the 
resolution or decomposition of these great waves or oscil- 
lations into the finer vibrations out of which they were 
built up, except in the case of the transformation or reso- 
lution of mass motion into light, heat, and the like, we 
cannot but feel that they must persist so involved and so 
implicated. It appears, therefore, neither impossible nor 
unthinkable that the resolution or transformation of the 
coarser vibration groupings, such as those of sound or 
various physical movements into the finest vibrations of 
which they are constituted, should be effected in the 
neurons. 

These finer vibrations are implicit or folded up in the 
grosser ones; and if they are susceptible of being mutually 
or reciprocally decomposed and recomposed, separated and 
again united, the fact supplies a key to the solution of many 
difficult psychic problems. 

For example, suppose that we assume that certain 
groupings of vibrations, taking appropriate form and 
direction, determine, or we may say constitute, muscular 
movements. The muscular movements thus produced, 
however extensive they may be, are in all probablity cor- 
relates or common multiples of the vibrations and vibra- 
tion groups that produced them; and the two classes of 
movements are reciprocally intertranslatable. The two 
forms are in turn correlates of, or at least, closely re ] ated 
to nerve force vibrations. 

Accepting this conclusion as correct, we obtain a some- 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 119 

what restful though dim conception of the way in which 
any particular movement will be followed, in the observer, 
by a like movement, or at any rate by a responsive move- 
ment and its associated feelings. 

Say, for example, that I perceive some person or even 
a lower animal engaged in the act of yawning. The energy 
conveyed to my neurons by the observed act of yawning 
is there decomposable and translatable into the same 
character of undulations that in the brain of him who is 
yawning gave rise to the act on his part. Therefore, when 
any such vibrations or vibration groups impress my brain 
through any of the senses, they arouse there the same 
character of vibrations that originally gave rise to the act 
in the person or thing observed. 

The case is the same with the act of laughing, smiling or 
weeping, with expressions of joy or sorrow or any other 
outcome of mentation that admits of expression of a kind 
cognizable by the senses. The principle involved is 
the basis of all involuntary imitation. The impulse that 
produces or elicits the act, the muscular movements that 
effect it, the impression it gives to the beholder and the 
beholder's own movements resulting from such impres- 
sions, are all intertranslatable through the common medium 
of basic vibrations. 

If we are willing to admit that tones of voice as well as 
expressions of countenance are intertranslatable with the 
vibrations that determine their production, we can easily 
perceive how words angrily spoken bring an angry response, 
how it is that a soft answer turns away wrath, and even 
how it is that all the world loves a lover. And thus it is 
that a deeper interpretation may be given to the estimate 
placed by the genius, Delsarte, as by so many others, 
upon the quality of voice and tone as well as movement and 
expression as being indicative of character. 



120 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

If one expresses himself in harsh laryngeal tones, and 
thereby betrays harshness and coarseness of nature, it is 
because the vibrations that are the primary or proximate 
source or origin of the constituent force-elements out of 
which such expression is formed are themselves gross and 
harsh, and proceed from harsh corpuscular elements or 
structure. Therefore, all the actions and all the expression 
of such an one, when spontaneous, will show in their 
harshness a general logical symmetry and consistency. 

And in fact the same rule will commonly apply to such 
a person's physical organism. On the other hand, the man 
or woman who employs soft palatal tones and whose words 
seem to linger with a sweet savor in the mouth, speaks from 
the abundance of the gentle vibrations that characterize 
and constitute the stored experiences of life in the archives 
of the brain, and thereby reveals a fineness of physical 
fiber as well. 

Indeed it is not impossible nor even improbable, that 
nerves of nutrition or so-called trophic nerves or centers 
have their offices of nutritive control likewise influenced 
by a kind of sympathy. It has often been remarked that 
after many years of association husbands and wives come to 
resemble each other in appearance. It is also a matter of 
common observation that children born of foreign parents, 
or who being born abroad have migrated to other lands, in 
the course of time, come to resemble, in expression, those 
with whom they associate in their altered surroundings 
and that, too, in a way that can hardly be accounted for by 
change of climatic influences alone. Furthermore, every 
one knows how certain occupations and callings work 
their influence on facial and even general bodily expression. 

Crowd Psychology 

Closely related to sympathy and suggestion is the influ- 
ence of what is commonly known as crowd psychology. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 121 

The great facility with which large masses of people can 
be aroused and led into an intense state of excitement is a 
matter of universal observation or experience. The 
declaration that, "Where two or three are gathered togeth- 
er in my name there am I in the midst of them," words 
ascribed to the Carpenter of Galilee, is a recognition of the 
principle of crowd psychology. Even in a meeting of as 
much as a single pair of unfamiliar people, each influences 
the other by his mere presence. 

Lower animals are influenced in a similar way. A 
strange cow entering an ordinary herd will cause a change 
in tone of voice and in movement of the entire number, 
and in this way a herdsman of sharply discriminating ear 
can readily discern by the altered tone of the lowing of his 
cattle that such a stranger has entered his herd. 

Crowd frenzy seems to be little more than an exaggera- 
tion of the state produced among smaller numbers by 
suggestion or expectant attention. Apparently it may be 
fostered both by the mutual inter-translation of language 
and movement, and by direct emanation of mental vibra- 
tions passing from one brain to another. This produces a 
tense activity resulting in a general overflow in the form of 
more or less uncontrolable emotion. 

Helped out by the aid of expectant attention, where the 
subject looks for and desires the resulting exaltation of 
feeling, it produces the reckless frenzy of the Malaysian 
zealot, the wild excitement of the snake worshipper, or the 
sun worshipper among American Indians, and similar 
conditions among other uncivilized races, as well as what 
is known as conversion among Christian peoples. In 
every case, the cause and the processes are the same, and 
the result is attained mainly by the mutual imparting and 
collecting of brain vibrations through various methods of 
communication. Other things being equal this influence 



122 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

probably increases in geometrical ratio with the number of 
persons involved. 

Brain Emanations 

Pursuing this subject still further, we shall find convinc- 
ing evidence that emanations apparently more subtle than 
any of the forces with which the special senses have to 
deal, or even can deal consciously, may be the medium 
through which one mind exerts an influence upon another 
and in a greater or less measure determines its workings. 

Along with other obscure and apparently mysterious 
phenomena of mind, that seem to a certain extent 
susceptible of explanation on this principle is that of mind 
reading or telepathy. It is not at all a rash surmise, nor 
even an extravagant claim that there exists in nature a 
world of subtle undulations operative within and upon the 
organ of mind, which with most of us never come within 
the purview of consciousness. 

That objects of various kinds give off delicate vibrations, 
without end and without number, which those who are 
blessed with sight never perceive, is clearly indicated by 
the fact that people totally blind have been enabled by 
means of the sense of touch alone to accomplish the most 
delicate distinction of colors. This is doubtless effected 
by the recognition of undulations that must be present 
and active with all minds, but which are perceived only 
under exceptional conditions. 

How reasonable this conclusion appears, an observation 
made by every one who has watched the change of day into 
night, while riding on a railroad train, bears ready witness. 
During the brighter part of the day the glass of the car 
window apparently evidences no reflection of any of the 
objects within, But as soon as night comes on and 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 123 

darkness begins to prevail, every pane of glass is transform- 
ed into a mirror presenting a more or less vivid reflection 
of the objects in the car. 

This is not because a larger number of the rays of light 
proceeding from the objects thus imaged are being reflec- 
ted now than during the day; on the contrary, such 
rays are far less numerous. The rays given off from the 
objects in the full light of day are vastly more abundant 
than those given off in the twilight, or later by artificial 
light, and a correspondingly larger number of them is 
reflected. 

During the day, consciousness was dazzled by the flood 
of vibrations that came into the car from without, and was 
not impressed by those that were reflected from the window 
panes; though these must all the time have been spending 
their force upon the neurons concerned in vision. 

Comparatively few persons are prepared to realize how 
much pain can be inflicted by the continued operation of 
purely normal forces, until they have witnessed the suffer- 
ings of those who have for a long time blocked the pathway 
to consciousness by the habitual use of opium, and then 
suddenly left off the use of the drug. The cause of this 
pain is little if anything else than the tearing away or 
absorption by the leucocytes, of the waste and used-up 
tissue cells, a process which under other circumstances 
might be not only painless but even agreeable. 

But now nearly every nerve in the body will begin to 
ache with pain well nigh intolerable. And yet the same 
activities, the same tearing away of debris, in short all the 
same causes of pain, though all the time in full operation, 
are in normal conditions not observed, or at most, ob- 
served as a source of uneasiness of only a very moderate 
kind. 

There are individuals who are said to possess the power 



124 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

of .olored audition; that is, a disturbance which others 
perceive as sound, they perceive as color. This may 
reasonably be supposed to be due to a peculiar power of 
translating or decomposing the sound waves by a subtle 
unconscious analysis into the still finer vibrations, that are 
the ultimate factors of the vibrations that produce the 
sensation of sound; possibly into the ether vibrations that 
are the elements of light and other expression of energy 
embracing the finest movements. And again it may be 
questioned whether or not a nerve of vision may, in the 
process of embryonic development, have strayed in among 
the nerves of hearing. 

Under the influence of hydrophobia, and perhaps some 
other affections, the sensibility of the deaf has been known 
to become so exalted that they could hear acutely; a result 
evidently due to an increased sensitiveness of the neurons 
and not to any alteration of the conducting medium. 

Besides the vibrations given off as brain emanations 
here suggested, there are other multitudes with which all 
space must be tremulous, but which have never yet been 
brought directly through the medium of sense into human 
consciousness. And in addition to the familiar forms of 
radiant energy, floods of tremors having their origin 
apparently beyond the visible universe, though entirely 
inappreciable to consciousness directly through the senses 
have been abundantly demonstrated through instrumental 
means; and these under some conditions may influence 
consciousness. 

Many of the lower animals possess an acuteness of per- 
ception unknown to human beings, and in many respects 
they surpass men by far in refinement of sensibility. Thus 
the sense of orientation that guides animals in homing is 
very weak in man and often apparently non-existent. On 
the other hand, turtles, frogs, and other amphibious ani- 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 125 

mals are enabled to scent, or in some other way to realize 
the location of so neutral a substance as water, even though 
miles way. Numerous marvels of a similar character are 
reported of various other animals, and especially as regards 
insects. 

The discovery of wireless telegraphy recently made in 
the domain of physical science, a thing which only a few 
years ago would have been regarded as the greatest of 
marvels, serves strongly to support the probability that 
brain emanations are everywhere prevalent. And it may 
not be amiss to repeat in this connection that when once 
energy takes the form of ether waves, it apparently goes 
on through the pure ether forever. 

In view of the foregoing and a great array of similar facts, 
may we not with reason conclude that the mind is all the 
time receiving from the external world countless subtle 
influences, subtle waves of the nature of those that produce 
sensations, but ordinarily not of sufficient intensity or of 
the proper pitch to be consciously recognized? 

Assuming further that in man as well as other animals, 
there is a delicate sense as yet unnamed, capable in certain 
individuals of being consciously affected by these emana- 
tions, we should have an explanation of mind reading or 
telepathy. 

Mind Reading and Telepathy 

The claims of mind reading have encountered much 
scepticism; and doubtless too much has been claimed for 
it, not to mention the almost illimitable fraud and trickery 
it has been invoked to conceal. Yet no fact in science or 
history has been more completely and conclusively proven 
than the existence of telepathy, insofar as is necessary to 
establish the fact of the transference of both motor and 



126 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

sensory impulses, without the employment of any special- 
ized medium or agency of sensation. 

In most cases communication made apparently by direct 
emanation from brain to brain is the form observed. Thus, 
the mind reader, so called, will discover a hidden object 
under circumstances in the highest degree calculated to 
baffle and mislead ; will sing a song silently thought over by 
some one near; while practically completely blindfolded 
will drive a team of horses at a rapid pace through a crowd- 
ed street, guarding against collision as effectually as the 
most expert driver with all his faculties free. In order to 
accomplish the latter feat he will require to be kept 
in contact with the prompter merely by his hand, foot or 
knee, and that through shoes or clothing. 

If we can accept as true what has already been set forth, 
this need not seem so very strange nor its explanation so 
difficult. Assuming that the undulations or groupings of 
undulations in the mind of the active agent or prompter, 
have such force as to extend to and impress the exception- 
ally sensitive neurons of the recipient mind-reader, and 
that these vibrations are then discharged to the muscles of 
the recipient, or that they guide the discharge of the mental 
vibrations of the mind reader as these vibrations would 
have been discharged into his own muscles, if the impulse 
had been original with him, there is nothing more strange 
or inexplicable in the phenomena than there is in the fact 
that our own muscles are obedient to the nerve impulses 
that direct them. 

Experience of Miss Mollie Fancher 

There are, however, many recorded facts of this class 
still more remarkable, and still more difficult of belief, but 
yet vastly better authenticated than the marvels claimed 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 127 

for any system of theology that has ever existed. In this 
category may be placed the well-known case of Miss 
Mollie Fancher of Brooklyn, who is still living, but with 
the entire loss of her marvelous gifts. 

This girl, it is just to say, made no pretentions to occult 
powers, rejected all notions of spirit control, and even sedu- 
lously endeavored to hide from the public all knowledge 
of her wonderful endowments. 

As an example of her powers, it is related that on one 
occasion a committee of gentlemen, one of them a physician 
of high standing, who had been her medical attendant for 
years, another her pastor, Doctor Prime, then editor of the 
New York Observer, and a man of national reputation for 
probity and truthfulness, together undertook a test of her 
ability to read printed words enclosed in envolopes. 

They sat down together at a table, blindfolded, and one 
of them removed a leaf from a copy of the Congressional 
Globe. This they cut into small pieces which one of them 
gathered up and put into an envelope and sealing it, handed 
it to another of the party who put this envelope into a 
second which he also sealed. This was repeated by the 
third member, so that the clippings remained enclosed in 
three sealed envelopes, one within the other. 

In order to prevent any impressions of the contents from 
being made on their minds, and to eliminate the possibility 
of mind reading, the paper was not read nor looked at by 
any of the party before the test, and the work of selection, 
clipping and sealing were all effected by touch alone. 

The clippings, with their triple envelope, were then 
submited to Miss Fancher, who was at the time totally 
blind, with one of her hands fixed behind her head in a 
condition of cataleptic rigidity. With her free hand, the 
right, she grasped the package and held it for a brief period 
against her forehead. Then putting it to the back of her 



128 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

head, and holding it there in her left hand, she, with her 
right hand, wrote out what purported to be the contents. 
Every now and then as she progressed, she would make a 
dash to indicate a blank, and then proceed with her writing. 
When she had finished, the visitors took the package, re- 
turned to the room where it had been prepared, opened it, 
pieced it out, and then compared it with what Miss Fanch- 
er had written. To their astonishment they found the 
interpretation perfectly accurate, except that some of 
the pieces were missing, and to these the dashes correspond- 
ed. Looking further, the committee found that they had 
inadvertently let the missing pieces fall onto the floor while 
preparing for the test and had failed to put them into the 
envelopes. 

True enough this is not mind reading; but it serves to 
illustrate the action of waves ordinarily insensible and 
unsuspected upon a most delicately organized brain. 

We have in this case to suppose that delicate and subtle 
undulations perhaps related to radium emanations were 
given off by these clippings and the printed letters on them, 
and that these undulations reached Miss Fancher's mind, 
somewhat in the way colors make their impress on the 
neurons of the blind when such colors are perceived by the 
sense of touch. 

We must further suppose a brain so sensitive that it 
could focus the letters and the bits of paper in much the 
same way as the eye does visible objects, or as the ear 
measures distance and discerns direction by the difference in 
the vibratory forces of sound emanations. Being held up 
all at once before the mind's eye, they were sorted out and 
fitted to each other in a manner similar to that pursued 
by the experimenters themselves in verifying the trans- 
lation. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 129 



The Watseka Wonder 

A case more distinctly in point as an instance of tele- 
pathy, and that of the kind styled by the French "Tele- 
pathie a trois," was that of Lurancy Vennum, "The 
Watseka Wonder," which transpired in the seventies of 
the last century about the time of the greatest vogue of 
spiritism. 

A family by the name of Roff, living at Watseka, Illinois, 
had lost a daughter not yet grown, named Mary, who had 
been a cataleptic. In a distant part of the same town lived 
a family of the name of Vennum. This family had a 
daughter named Lurancy, who was less than three years 
old when Mary Roff died, and was only acquainted with 
her through reputation. At the age of twelve years, 
Lurancy Vennum began to experience trances and parox- 
ysms that are described as "fits" and also to develop a 
double personality or double consciousness. Conceiving 
the notion that she was Mary Roff, the girl who had died 
nine years before, Lurancy demanded that she be 
returned to what she claimed as her rightful place with the 
parents of the dead girl; at the same time speaking of them 
as her father and mother. Her request was at length 
granted as apparently the only means of preventing her 
from pining away to a fatal end. 

She joyfully entered into the vacant place, and it was 
soon demonstrated that she had largely succeeded to the 
memories of the dead girl, though as it appears exclusively 
of such only as her foster parents had at some time had 
knowledge of. She began at once recalling minute parti- 
culars of various circumstances and adventures in the life 
of Mary Roff as if they had been actually her own. Many 
of these her foster parents had quite forgotten until they 
were in this way recalled to their attention. 



130 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

These revived or rather awakened impressions and 
memories were assumed by her spiritist friends to be 
transferences from the spirit of the dead girl. But a far 
more consistent and scientific explanation can be offered, 
based upon physiological or psycological principles fairly 
well established. The explanation of this case that a liberal 
psychology would offer, would be the following: "The 
Wonder," for the time being, owing to some recondite 
changes in her organism, became abnormally and delicately 
sensitive to the vibrations emanating from the neurons 
of the parents of the dead girl, and with which vibrations, 
at the same time, the neurons of the parents were perpet- 
uating the memories of happenings acquired by them in 
connection with the dead girl while she was living. 

These vibrations Lurancy was capable of perceiving and 
interpreting at second hand as they emanated from the 
brains of Mary Roff's parents, and that too with marked 
accuracy and particularity, though these parents them- 
selves were in large part unconscious of possessing them, 
and unaided could probably never have recalled them. 

To such as are willing to accept this explanation, it 
will afford a pertinent argument in favor of the view that 
memories are persistently active in the brain cells or neu- 
rons, and are in reality never entirely dormant or quies- 
cent and displaying activity only when aroused by agents 
from without the neurons. 

We may safely affirm that the only limit to insight of the 
character here described is imposed by the coarseness and 
obtuseness of our nervous organization. If once brain 
vibrations can be communicated to the ether, distance 
counts for nothing except in the way of diffusion. Trans- 
ference to the ether once accomplished, thought waves 
may then keep pace with the waves of light and electricity. 
Indeed it seems that they must do so, since there appears 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 131 

to be but one rate at which disturbing waves can travel 
through the ether. 

If then, thought waves can take the form of ether waves, 
as does the light given off by the glow worm, or even that 
from decaying wood, they must add something of distur- 
bance though infinitely little it may be to Sirius and 
Aldebaran and every other star in view as well. Nature 
everywhere in the wide realms of space must be vibrant 
with messages struggling for revelation, and which we 
might be all the time receiving if only our nervous organi- 
zation were sufficiently refined and sensitive. 

We have seen that there are cells in the brain without 
axons, or connecting tubules, which yet display spon- 
taneous activity, and on occasions throw out prolonga- 
tions of their protoplasm — string their own wires one might 
say, — in order to seek information from others, and to 
impart their own messages and suggestions. Is it unrea- 
sonable then to conclude that possibly every single neuron 
is capable of receiving impressions and making communi- 
cations through the instrumentality of direct emanations? 

Nor is it fanciful or unreasonable to believe that emana- 
tions are given off through these low-whispering undula- 
tions that are continually influencing for good or ill, those to 
whose lot it has fallen to be our associates. An atmosphere 
of subtle influence emanating from the neurons of all our 
brains, and strengthening or counteracting as the case may 
be the undulations in the neurons of other brains which are 
concerned in a corresponding function, is not at all an 
impossible condition. Whosoever, therefore, can develop 
a spirit of evangelism, whosoever is able to go about among 
his fellows "singing and making melody in his heart," is 
ceaselessly exerting a silent influence for good through the 
gentle vibrations that pass from brain to brain, and wake 
in the hearts of his associates kindred impulses. And thus 



132 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

it may be that kindly thoughts and kindly sentiments as 
well as kindly words, coming from the fulness of a benevo- 
lent heart, are but forms of prayer; and prayer, moreover, 
that never goes unanswered. 

Telepathy in Lower Animals 

Seeing how far the lower animals surpass man in the a- 
cuteness of special sense, how deficient they are in the means 
of communication by articulate language, and consequent- 
ly how great the need of some form of telepathic communi- 
cation, it ought not to be surprising if it should turn out 
that such an endowment exists far more highly developed 
in the lower animals than in man. 

It is possible that many species of lower animals, and 
especially insects, may read from each others' minds as 
from a book such records as they contain. Without, 
however, going into the voluminous evidence pointing to 
such a conclusion, it must here suffice to say that both well 
established facts and careful reasoning afford it a strong 
support. 

The Will 

Breaking somewhat abruptly, perhaps, into the order 
of our investigations, we may here essay a brief excursion 
into the realm of the Will; casting a 6 lance at its nature, 
tracing its connection with the class of vibrations we have 
here been studying, and briefly considering its relation to 
the betterment of the moral condition of the race. 

What is Will? Is it in any sense an independent entity, 
free to exert control over the other faculties of the mind, 
and the activities of the body, or is it the expression of a 
mere predominance of inclinations and motives which 
themselves have their basis in the deeper instincts? 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 133 

The consistent evolutionist ought to be able to find Will 
among the possibilities of matter and force. And just as 
it was heretofore insisted that soul-stuff or the vital 
energy, whatever that may be, must either be identical 
with the common force in its nature or else must itself be 
drawn from a reservoir of vital energy as wide as the range 
of life; an energy that is everywhere present and every- 
where prone to be transformed into the life of new beings; 
in like manner what is known as Will, if a thing apart, 
must exist everywhere as a property or an attribute of the 
vital energy. The Will of the ancestor cannot by any 
possibility be indefinitely divided to furnish a Will for each 
new being, nor can there exist the power of producing a Will 
except it be out of forces already abundant in the realm of 
nature, and prone to enter into such a formation as the 
Will whatever that may be. If all life is one, then wherever 
there is life there must be also what we recognize as Will. 

Will must be found in all lower animals as well as in 
plants. And in spite of all that may be said, Will in the 
lower animals must be essentially of the same nature as in 
man. "But in what guise," it may be asked, "do we find 
Will, or its counterpart in plants?" I would answer, in 
the tone or tension of the albuminoid particles that corres- 
pond to the leucocytes in man. 

And in man, are there separate cells in the brain, which 
are the particular seat of the Will, or does it wander from 
cell to cell and go out and in as an independent energy to 
direct the contraction and relaxation of the muscles, or the 
course and character of the thoughts in the brain? Does 
it know of itself what to do and how to do it; or does it need 
to inquire of intelligence and conscience in order to know 
what is wise, right and prudent? If it is independent in 
its operation, if it is acting blindly, it is as apt to go wrong 
as right, as apt to do harm as good. 



134 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

For my own part, I can see in Will only the tone or 
tension of muscular or nervous activities, and regard it as 
not to be separated from these any more than speed is to 
be separated from running. It represents merely the 
predominating forces of inclination, and the greater weight 
of incentive. If the incentive forces all lead in one direc- 
tion, if the inclination is all one way, and the fiber of the 
mental structure is vigorous, the Will is strong. If the 
incentive is divided, the inclination vacillating, or the 
mental fiber flabby and inelastic, then the Will is weak. 
In the form of tension, Will can and doubtless does have 
existence in the protoplasm of plants, as already said, as 
well as in the fibril of the muscle, and in the neuron of the 
brain or spinal cord, even if not in the affinity of chemical 
elements. 

It must be remembered that the volitional force which 
controls muscles and holds them in contraction, or restrains 
the contracting impulse by placing an opposing tension in 
the nerve cells or molecules, arises in individual cells or 
molecules, and does not arise primarily in whole nerve 
centers or ganglions, or the whole brain at once. If Will 
is a separate and independent entity, then there are Wills 
innumerable in the same individual. 

The force known as Will affects the larger units of mental 
or physical elements, because after having arisen in separate 
cells, it is gathered and coordinated along with the opera- 
tive forces of which it is really but an aspect. That is to 
say it manifests itself simply as stress or intensity of nerve 
action directed either to the production of muscular 
contraction or inhibition, or to the control of thought act- 
ivities. 

If it is not a separate entity, but a mere quality or degree 
of intensity of action or stress of activity, the energy which 
in man constitutes the volition of which he is conscious, 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 135 

or its counterpart the determination and regulation of 
muscular action or tone may well dwell in all living things. 
In many animals largely, and to some extent in man, if 
the spinal cord be severed, irritability and excitability 
will still persist, and irritation or excitation will elicit 
movements of the muscles of the extremities which receive 
their nerve supply from that part of the spinal cord beyond 
the injury. Vigorous spasms either tonic or clonic may 
take place in a large proportion of animals, after the head 
has been severed from the body. A form of Will persists 
in the dissevered part, for a time in these cases, and one can 
not well say that it differs from the Will of the whole 
organism as it existed before the separation, except that 
now coordination cannot be effected in the same degree, 
and a perception of the intensity of the muscular action 
cannot be aroused in consciousness. 

Freedom of the Will 

The contention that the Will is subject to no rule of 
action, that the accidental whim of the conscious individ- 
uality is in any case the controlling power, involves the 
assertion of a category different from all other processes in 
nature, since it places the human Will entirely outside the 
operation of law, and thus makes it the one thing whose 
action can never be foretold. Here alone, in that case, 
would we have reached a final self-governing cause. But 
it is in the highest degree improbable that there can be 
only this one exception to the reign of law. 

Nor do the great majority of those who profess to 
believe in the freedom of the Will, square their actions and 
anticipations with their professions. They almost invari- 
ably expect the individual to act upon the predominant 
motive or inclination. This is the involuntary tribute we 



136 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

all pay to the truth of the principle. For, given a full 
knowledge of the nature and the character of the man and 
the act, everyone will venture to predict his line of conduct 
under given conditions. Whenever one says,'T know what 
I would do under such and such conditions or circum- 
stances," he denies by implication the freedom of the Will; 
for the warrant of such a prediction has its basis in nothing 
else than the fact that volition is exerted in obedience to 
law. 

Whoever devotes himself to a careful analysis of any 
movement he may make or any act of volition whatever, 
will probably never fail to discover something going before 
the effort and deciding or determining what it shall be. If, 
for example, he is prompted to point with a finger, his 
first impulse is to use the index finger. This comes pri- 
marily from the simple reason that the index finger has a 
fuller and more suitable muscular equipment than the 
other fingers and is adapted to a larger range of movement. 

If he chooses to point with the second finger, because he 
"wills" to do so, as he puts it. he will find on careful in- 
trospection, the desire to show that he can do it. The 
inclination to please or to oppose, antagonism or sympathy, 
has brought about in his mind the decision to make the 
election. For it is not to be forgotten that both antagonism 
and sympathy are not only determining forces, but forms of 
real energy. If one decides to make some movement, 
merely to be making a movement, and without any appar- 
ent or definite aim, or to perform some indifferent act 
such as pulling out a hair or touching his lips, he makes 
that movement because it was the first or the most force- 
fully suggested, or the first to come into conscious memory 
and the one to which the predominant inclination most 
readily leads. 

In short, if all the complex promptings that control 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 137 

conduct in which Will may be manifested, and all the 
attendant conditions and circumstances were as accurately 
known as the forces affecting falling bodies, a man's 
conduct would be foretold as accurately and as fully as the 
flow of water or the motion of a planet. 

Men reach the conviction that the Will is primarily 
predominant and free, by contemplating the complex 
preliminaries that lead to an act only at that stage at 
which its performance is imminent. They take little or no 
account of the many complex steps leading up to the act 
of seemingly independent volition or exercise of the Will. 
They then conclude that because the close of the act 
accords with the felt inclination, it must be the result of an 
independent exercise of the Will. They catch a glimpse of 
a stone as it starts rolling down the slope of a mountain, 
and unmindful of the preliminary conditions and prepara- 
tions that made such movement possible, and even inevi- 
table, they come to the conclusion that the stone moves of 
itself. 

But going before, there was always a controlling some- 
thing, an inclination or a predominance of inclination that 
was the prompter and the master of the Will^ if indeed the 
Will be anything but persistent predominant inclination. 

The gist of the real case in the matter of free Will has 
seldom if ever been better put than in an answer ascribed 
to an inebriate who, when told that he could give up the 
habit of drink if he wanted to, replied, "That is all quite 
true, but unfortunately I can't want to." There must 
always be a something going before, a something deeper 
that leads us "to want to" before we can will. 

Determinism and Reward 

Mankind in general have come to regard it as a settled 
fact that punishment, or at least the fear of punishment is 



138 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

essential to the conservation of the social order; and many 
men, perhaps from the promptings of the feeling that 
revenge is sweet, are reluctant to admit that the human 
being, like all others, is purely and absolutely an automa- 
ton, moved though he may be by an amazing complex of 
interacting forces. Men are unwilling to be cheated out of 
their revenge, as they regard it, and rebel at the thought 
of being compelled to forego the gratification of their 
resentment. 

The unreasoning are unable to see in this asserted reign 
of law in the conduct of men, anything more than a denial 
of personal responsibility and accountability, and a license 
for all maimer of unsocial conduct. And there is no doubt 
that determinism does deny and even positively assert 
the abrogation of responsibility and accountability in the 
common acceptation of those terms. 

But a resonable construction of the accepted teachings 
of the past, all lead to the same end and the same conclusion 
as determinism. Even those teachings indeed, which are 
approved and advocated by the most strenuous partisans 
of free will, and the most arrogant partisans of vindictive 
punishment, confirm the doctrine of determinism, while 
"kismet" of the Mohammedan, fatalism of the Greeks, and 
predestination of an order of Christians are but other 
names for the same idea. 

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he 
is old he will not depart thereform," is held by most 
advocates of the principle of free Will to be a precept of 
divine authority. And it is a teaching as true as it is 
ancient. But the child is not responsible for his training, 
and if his organization is so defective that he is incapable 
of being trained, surely he is not responsible for his organi- 
zation. 

There remains only one other factor entering into the 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 139 

trinity of influences that shape a man's character and 
determine his conduct, and that is his environment or the 
total of the affective circumstances in which he is placed. 
To say one can choose his own environment is to beg the 
question at issue, for by that very contention we assume the 
existence of free Will. 

If, then, a man has chosen his environment, insofar as he 
may so choose, in full accord with his organization and his 
training, which indeed he will always do, he is not respon- 
sible for his character nor in the final analysis, for his 
conduct. Therefore^ in the last, the supreme hour, such a 
man, though his sins be as scarlet, after he has stripped off 
and rendered back to his ancestry all that he has come into 
by inheritance; to his training all that it has imposed, and 
to the world of his day, to the circumstances and social 
forces affecting him, all that is due to their influence, he 
will venture out to "cross the bar" into the untried shore- 
less waste, with not a threatening cloud to mar the horizon 
of his hope, and with sails as white as the foaming crests 
of the billows that divide in his pathway. 

Just and fit then is the old Roman maxim, "De mortuis 
nil nisi bonum," — "Let nothing but good be spoken of the 
dead." And justly and fitly might the maxim be found 
inscribed on the monument of every mortal, upon whose 
eyelids eternal sleep ever pressed its soothing finger. 

But is there then to be no punishment for offenses 
against the well-being of society? Shall every crime go 
unavenged, and every criminal unwhipt of justice? Not 
by any manner of means; only that punishment must 
not be vindictive. Certainly there must be punishment for 
offenses against the social order, and by all means let it be 
swift, just and sure, and such as shall secure to society 
peace and safety. Swift and sure punishment for wrong 
doing, for sins against the social order, is a part of the envi- 



140 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

ronment, a factor of the inclination, that it is the duty of 
of society to hold up before the eyes of every individual in 
order to help and enable him to do right, and to restrain 
himself from doing wrong. 

Society has little need and little right to worry about the 
sinner getting his just punishment in another world. The 
sinner is the product in a broad sense of the society that he 
burdens. Society itself, or the race, is the real culprit, 
and the very existence of evil doing and the evil doer, is 
the just punishment that is visited upon it for having 
produced him and aided in imposing upon him his behavior. 

Possibility of Race Betterment 

"But," it may be asked, "if the Will can never take the 
initiative, if it is merely a mode of cell action which itself 
begins in or is instigated from the subconscious, if all 
volition and all mentation are ultimately and fundamental- 
ly automatic, and all feeling equally so, what is there in all 
the range of possible influences that can lead or move the 
world to improve? What is there that can make men 
better?" The answer is that there are in nature two forces 
at least that work for the betterment of the race. Or 
rather it might be said that there is a meliorating force 
manifesting itself in two forms, one operating directly and 
the other indirectly. 

The indirect and secondary form is human experience. 
Men come in the course of time to realize greater happiness 
from conduct which is in accord with reason and conscience 
and that meets with the approval of their organic sense of 
justice, than from conduct of an opposite character; and 
this is taught by the old to the young. 

The direct and primary cause is the tendency of time and 
distance to soften asperities of feeling, and is itself due to 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 141 

the fact that with time and distance, an increased gentle- 
ness of movement characterizes the vibrations of which all 
mental activities consist. 

Can anything be imagined that would more effectually 
drive from the heart of man the spirit of hatred and revenge 
toward his brother man, than the full and clear conviction 
of the fact that that brother, in all his course and conduct, 
was doing the only thing that the motives and the incent- 
ives controlling him permitted him to do; that he does the 
only thing he "can want to do"? Guided by such doc- 
trines and convictions, men could then come truly to hate 
the sin and love the sinner. And this is the new evangel, 
the new old bond of brotherhood that in the happy future 
will bind man to his brother. 

For twenty -five centuries, the sublime injunction of 
Confucius, "This is perfect virtue, to go forth always as to 
receive some great guest, doing nothing unto others that 
you would not have them to do unto you"; and for nearly 
twenty centuries that other sublime injunction imposed by 
Jesus, "Do unto others as ye would that they should do 
unto you," have wrought upon the hearts and minds of 
men, and yet have failed to bring justice and peace and 
happiness to countless numbers, to the vast majority of 
the human family. In the doctrine of determinism a new 
evangel appeals, originating like the others, out of the 
characteristics of the excursion of the ether wave, out of the 
very nature of the behavior of the infinite energy. 

It tells me that I am not to hate my brother when he 
seemingly wrongs me, not because I am forbidden to do so, 
but because he acted in necessary response to the incentives 
for the time controlling his conduct, and that under the 
circumstances and conditions, he could act no otherwise. 
Let this doctrine once come to completely dominate the 
human race, let men once come to realize it in all its fulness, 



142 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

and hatred, bigotry and intolerance would melt away from 
the hearts of men like a mist before the rising sun. 

Emphasis and Inflection 

The laws that determine the character of intonation 
and inflections of voice, as exemplified in the expression of 
ideas and emotions, and also the character of physical 
movement elicited in the like office, will be found also to 
lend additional and reasonable support to a theory of men- 
tal activities based on vibration and vibration groupings. 

The same principles prevail in this regard throughout all 
departments of animal life from the lowest to the most 
exalted. The child from its first attainment of the power 
of speech is able to express its feelings and desires by the 
employment of emphasis and inflection, in a way that 
insofar as its understanding goes, is not surpassed, if ever 
again equalled in the highest state of its subsequent mental 
development. The lower animals, also, to the extent that 
they are capable of giving vocal expression to their emo- 
tions, feelings and desires, employ intonations and inflec- 
tions very similar to those employed among human beings. 
Furthermore such of them as are not possessed of voice 
find expression in physical movements closely related to 
and suggestive of those which men employ under similar 
conditions. 

Every thoughtful observer knows that neither the child 
nor the animal is under any necessity of learning either 
emphasis or inflection or the right mode of physical expres- 
sion from any teacher. The proper mode of expression is 
instinctively chosen and intuitively understood. Certain- 
ly then we ought to be able to trace out and understand 
the origin and nature of that which all children, and many 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 143 

lower animals, come by so easily and uniformly. Yet as 
far as the writer's knowledge goes not even an attempt has 
heretofore been made to develop the philosophy of this, 
the most important, as it is the most nearly universal 
class of accessory elements employed in expression, and 
one of the most indispensable aids in the effectual commun- 
ication of thought. 

Basis of Emphasis 

Let us first endeavor to ascertain the basis or the reason 
for emphasis and the various forms of inflection. From 
the standpoint of evolution, the basis of emphasis as well 
as evolution is evidently to be found in its economy. No 
possible number of w°rds could convey all the meanings 
communicable by the various modifications of which the 
voice is capable, and the more especially when helped out 
by the expressive physical movements which are themselves 
the correlates of vocal expression and even of thought. 
The power and ability to make them available gives the 
possessor a corresponding advantage in the struggle for 
existence. 

But these modifications of vocal and physical expression 
must be present, potentially at least, before the test of 
fitness can be applied; and it is the ulterior cause and 
reason for their existence that we have yet to ascertain. 
The primary factor and cause, that is, the one nearest to 
the first cause that we can conceive or grasp, is curiosity 
or the natural craving of the mind for knowledge. This 
is not in any liklihood the ultimate agency, but whatever 
goes before it is probably as much beyond us as the cause 
of affinity among chemical elements. The next step 
beyond curiosity or innate desire for knowledge, or the 
"Will to know," as the Germans term it, is probably the 



144 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

inherent satisfaction or pleasure to be derived from the 
contemplation of objects singly. 

The attention of both men and animals is gratified when 
permitted to be occupied by a single object or a single clear 
cut idea at a time; and the more attractive an idea or 
object is, the greater is the gratification in having it as the 
exclusive occupant of the attention. 

If an object is presented to us separated and placed out 
by itself, it is an easy task to fix the attention upon it, but 
so long as it forms an inconspicuous member of a mass or 
group, this is more difficult. In contemplating a land- 
scape or a crowd of men, for instance, we may find a vague 
or even a lively pleasure ; but this pleasure becomes livelier 
still when we are enabled to contemplate the members of 
the group individually. At all events the tendency of the 
mind, the drift of the thoughts, is ever in the direction of 
the contemplation of objects separately, or of the contem- 
plation of conspicuous concrete groups that answer to 
separate objects. 

We may perceive this disposition of the mind manifested 
on a large scale in history; and in it to a great degree is to 
be found the source of hero worship. It is much easier to 
select the one person who may happen to be most conspi- 
cuous in a given field or period, and ascribe to him all the 
merit due for some great attainment to which a whole 
people have contributed, than rightly to distribute, and 
award his just share to each of many participants. For, 
"To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath 
not shall be taken away, even that he hath," is a maxim 
grounded in the laws of attention. 

In addition to what is commonly known as emphasis is 
to be considered that further form of stress of voice known 
as inflection, which is in reality a prolongation, sliding or 
stretching out of emphasis, or rather a combination of 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 145 

emphasis and intonation which gives a meaning to speech, 
impossible to mere words. Furthermore these inflections 
are uniform and common to all races of men, and to all 
lower animals insofar as they have the power of vocal 
expression. And they are in almost all cases, the correlates 
of the physical movements by means of which animals 
possessed of voice, supplement vocal expression, and by 
means of which animals without voice, give expression 
to feelings and desires. 

Thus a demand or an unfinished action would be express- 
ed by one deaf and dumb, or by an animal, by an attitude, 
or a movement of aggression or confident expectancy, such 
as holding up the head or leaning forward stiffly. A 
concession or yielding, on the other hand, would be indi- 
cated by an attitude of relaxation or shrinking back into 
repose. So when a demand is made vocally, or a question 
asked that requires a direct answer, the rising inflection is 
used, because this typifies aggression. On the other hand, 
when an answer is given which is intended as a satisfaction 
of a question, or when a request is granted, it is felt to be an 
end of the effort, and the falling inflection is employed. 
The dying wails of conquered animals is everywhere 
uttered with the falling inflection. A mare separated from 
her colt will nicker with the rising inflection, which is 
equivalent to a demand to know where her colt is, or a 
demand for its return; and the colt will act in the same 
way in regard to the mother under like circumstances. 
But when they have found each other, both will whinney 
with the falling inflection. Indeed, the rule holds good 
throughout the animal kingdom. 

And there is little room to doubt that the expressive 
physical movements resorted to by animals are inter- 
translatable throughout, with the corresponding vocal 
expression and are intimately connected with the elements 



146 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

of the ideas they are intended to convey. The fundamen- 
tal vibrations and vibration groupings that constitute the 
thoughts, and those that lead to expressive physical mani- 
festations as well as the physical manifestations themselves 
are in the last analysis probably the same in all these and 
like instances. 

But what is the prime motive force? What is it that ini- 
tiates emphasis and inflection? Is it the prompting of the 
importance and value that we attach to the ideas to be 
expressed that leads to the employment of stress, or is 
stress chosen with the desire to impress others? The fact 
that young children and animals give stress with as great 
if not greater freedom and accuracy than human adults, is 
conclusive that the use of emphasis is intuitive with the 
speaker and actor; a part of the primary instincts. 

It is probably an invariable rule that emphasis involves 
and conveys a burden of meaning outside of the spoken 
words that carry it. A single phrase and often a single 
word can be made by implication to convey a wealth of 
meaning through appropriate vocal inflections. What 
magnitude of paraphase, for example, would be required to 
convey all the meaning impressed by the words, "The sea, 
The sea," shouted by the Greeks under Xenophon, when 
the sight of the Euxine assured them that the most impres- 
sive retreat on the pages of history had come to a happy 
ending. 

This principle has its foundation laid deep in the laws 
of physics, and is intimately connected with that which 
leads to an instinctive demand for the proper balancing of 
sentences in writing and speaking. Every truly complete 
and satisfactory sentence must have this quality of balance 
into however many parts it may be divided. In its final 
analysis the principle seems to be grounded in the law of the 
equality of action and reaction. As far as the wave rises 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 147 

above the level of the sea, so far its trough must sink below. 
The excursion of the pendulum on one side must be counter- 
balanced by an equal excursion on the other. Oscillation 
is a form of compensation, and it is one of the laws of 
energy. 

So when vibrations and vibration groupings are bunched 
or concentrated on a short member of a sentence, the 
intensity of the action may be offset either by a like intensi- 
ty of stress on the other member, or the length of the oppo- 
site member may be strung out with slight or mild stress so 
as to equalize the forces of action and reaction, thus 
effecting a balance or equilibrium. Especially is this 
feature noticeable in the employment of the circumflex 
inflection. Here the principle finds an apt illustration in 
the balancing of two weights on a scale beam. If one arm 
of such a beam is short and the other long, a proportionally 
greater weight on the short arm is required to balance a 
given weight on the long arm. 

So one idea or fact employed in the way of antithesis or 
contrast, if of great moment or intensity and represented 
by extensive groupings of vibrations, suffices to counter- 
balance a large number of facts or ideas represented by 
diffuse vibrations which are expressive of milder impulses. 

Nor is it altogether necessary for the words or phrases 
on the long arm to be expressed in order to convey the 
intended meaning and produce the intended effect. A 
single word may be pronounced with such force and 
quality of inflection as to suggest the nature and charac- 
ter of the ideas embraced in the counterbalancing clause 
or clauses. It is sufficient if all the factors are present in 
the mind of the speaker. 

How much of all the relations existing between Caesar 
and Brutus, the history of early antagonism and hostility, 
of pardon, of reconciliation, of strong friendship, then of 



148 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

conspiracy, betrayal and assassination must have been 
suggested and conveyed by Ceasar's dying exclamation, 
"Et tu, Brute," uttered as it doubtless was with all the 
force of the falling circumflex as the lion of so many bloody 
fields sank down at the foot of Pompey's pillar. 

Instinct and Reason 

The vibratory theory of vital manifestations contributes 
to an explanation of the origin of instinct and of the reason- 
ing faculty, insofar as the latter term signifies the adapta- 
tion of means to ends, that differs somewhat from the 
explanations offered by current theories, or any other 
explanations that have hitherto been offered as far as is 
known to the author. 

Evolution would place the original source or germ of 
both instinct and reason alike in the primal star dust. 
That is to say that both instinct and reason are implicit 
in the corpuscles and the associated energy out of which 
the beings that possess instinct and reason are developed. 
The primal vital corpuscles tend to give off the interacting 
vibrations and vibration groupings that are reason and that 
are instinct. 

The contention already advanced regarding the neces- 
sity of a practically umlimited store of the life principle, 
possessed of a tendency to pass or be transformed into 
vital forms as a prerequisite to the continuation of life on 
the earth, applies to instinct and reason as well. For if 
instinct and reason depend upon vibration, they are neces- 
sarily the results of modes or forms of the manifestation of 
energy, and must be renewed as they are exhausted. Among 
the chemical elements it is impossible for new combina- 
tions to be continuously formed, except in the presence 
of and in connection with a constantly renewed supply of 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 149 

appropriate material with unsatisfied chemical affinities. 
Nor can work anywhere be accomplished without a 
corresponding degradation of energy. 

Therefore even though life had come many times to the 
earth from some other planet, unless the elements out of 
which living beings were to be formed, that is, unless there 
had abounded on the earth corpuscles and forces apt and 
ready to enter into the constitution of living forms, the 
perpetuation of life from such a germ would have been 
absolutely impossbile; just as much so as the perpetuation 
of a conflagration among ashes, or the support of a flame 
wholly with carbonic acid or water. Indeed though the 
earth had by some miracle been peopled to its utmost 
capacity, in the absence of a provision of vital energy 
outside of the living beings at any time in existence, not 
even a second generation would have been possible. 

In a mass of blocks however extensive, if all are in a 
state of unstable equilibrium, if all are leaning sufficiently 
in the same direction, the removal of a single one might 
cause the entire collection to tumble. But if all were in 
a state of stable equilibrium, and without the energy of 
position, that is, if every one was resting on its own base, 
the removal or falling of one would not affect the others. 

If, then, it is true that force or energy must always have 
its abode in or with ponderable elements, elements which 
left to themselves would proceed to collect together 
under the influence of gravitation, and such elements only; 
we are driven to the conclusion that the arrangement of 
essential vital corpuscles, whatever they may be, together 
with the forms of force-groups or vibration groups which 
accompany them, produces or gives rise to instinct and 
reason, as it does to the organs in which instinct and 
reason reside, or through which they operate. 

The simplest example of what we may call instinct is 



150 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

to be observed in plants. If a collection of compost be 
buried in the soil in the neighborhood of a growing tree, 
but several yards beyond the extremity of its most advance 
rootlets, the roots on that side will take on renewed growth, 
and reaching out will invade and appropriate this store of 
nutrient material; the roots which grow in other directions 
meantime remaining unaffected. 

When Indian corn is tasseling and silking, the strands 
of the silk which are female organs, on emerging from the 
shuck, will bend upward in order to receive more readily 
the pollen or male element as it falls from the tassel, the 
male organ. The case of the wild-pea vine and the suckers 
has already been referred to in another connection, and 
thousands of similar examples might be collected and 
adduced. 

Now in the case of the tree roots and the nutritious 
compost, it is not to be supposed for a moment that inher- 
ited experience enabled the roots to go in search of the 
hidden pabulum; and as certainly it was not a reflex of a 
sensori-motor character or of any character in the ordinary 
acceptation of that term; and quite as certainly it was not 
an example of lapsed intelligence. How then can it be 
explained ? What can be its origin ? 

The author does not belive that these phenomena can be 
explained without invoking forms or modes of behavior 
of vibrations of a character different from any hitherto taken 
cognizance of by science. There is little room to doubt 
that a special form of vibration akin to nerve force is all 
the time playing throughout the tissues of plants and trees, 
and connecting their tiniest rootlets with the remotest 
buds and leaflets. This force is probably in the main of a 
trophic nature, and by the interaction of its currents, it 
determines the shape and symmetry of the tree, as well as 
its structure and composition, by presiding over its 
development and growth. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 151 

The motions of this force are most likely akin to those 
involved in the production of flower and lace effects in 
frost forms, in the patterns of the treasures of the snow, the 
figures of dust gathering on vibrating goldbeater's skin, 
and other like manifestations in inorganic life already 
referred to, only the organic are vastly more complex. 

These quasi-nervous vibrations, it would seem, are not 
restricted to the body of the tree, but take on also the form 
of emanations. In the case of the compost and the tree, 
these projected emanations, according to the resistence 
they experience, or the welcome they receive in the way of 
harmonious response, it would seem probable, determine 
a reaction which controls the extent and direction of the 
growth of the roots and rootlets as well as the method of the 
appropriation of the nutriment they obtain. 

The chick, as soon as the shell has fallen from its back, 
pecks its food with an accuracy that is almost unerring. 
Now the ancestors of this chick never probably in all their 
generations learned or had to learn this act any more than 
itself has done so; never thought it out or contrived it. 
The vibratory forces inherent in the structure of the chick 
imposed the act upon it by their orderly movements. They 
gauged the muscular sense, guided the muscular 
movements, measured the distance, calculated the direc- 
tion, and even probably distinguished the food. 

The tree is rooted in the ground with its leaves in the 
air. The chick is free to move about, for its roots are in 
its alimentary canal and its leaves in its lungs, but between 
the tree and the chick, in the particulars named, there is 
no essential difference. For the rootlets of the tree there 
is prepared a separate solvent fluid for each element of the 
soil it needs to absorb; and in the stomach of the chick, 
as in the stomach of all other animals, a different kind of 
digestive fluid is secreted for each different kind of food 
ingested. 



152 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

But what then of reason? We are prone to speak of 
reason in its relation to instinct as if reason were the broad 
controlling entity, and instinct a trifling subsidiary activity 
that could not exist without reason; some shed skin of 
reason as it were, thrown off in the dim ages of the past. 
Wherever there is found apparent design or contrivance, we 
incline to begin to inquire whether conscious reasoning 
may not sometime or somehow have crept in as its cause. 

Now reason in the sense of consciously designing or 
contriving is the mere blossom, the mere foliage of instinct 
and one is just as automatic as the other in its original 
inception. A mushroom bed when seeded, in a little 
while becomes all shot through with silken threads of 
mycelium. A little later this mycelium or mold sends 
stalks of mushrooms up through the surface; and then 
forgetting all the wealth of growth that lies beneath the 
surface, we attach importance only to the showy growth 
of a night that appears above. 

So it is with instinct and reason. In considering the 
seemingly spontaneous development of the tree, we forget 
the formation of root and branch and leaf and flower, forget 
the thousands of wonderful combinations built up in its 
juices ; forget in the animal the stringing of the numberless 
electric wires of the nerves, the tunneling of the arteries, 
the transforming of the epidermis into tooth and tusk and 
hair and horn, forget the whole fearful and wonderful 
construction of the body and the faculties with which it is 
endowed, all of which are essentially automatic, spontane- 
ous or instinctive, and then discovering a sporadic outcrop- 
ping called reason, we begin wondering how instinct can 
so much resemble it; wondering how the tree came to 
resemble in so many features one of its little branches. 

The power of conscious reasoning is but an ornament on 
the brow of instinct, the out-cropping of an exhaustless 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 153 

ledge of hidden wealth while instinct is little else than 
unconscious or subconscious reasoning. Instinct is but 
the reasoning, the formulated organic logic of nature. 

Let us endeavor to construct a definite conception of a 
method by which instinct might originate, on the basis 
of the principles here indicated. And it may be said that 
in doing this we are but describing the methods by which 
tendencies in the elements of all organic bodies mold these 
elements into definite forms and develop appropriate 
functions. 

As an example, for the purpose of illustration, we may 
take a cue from a practice common among chemists. In 
conducting chemical analyses, it frequently happens that 
when a solution of several substances mixed together has 
reached the point of condensation at which crystals are 
about to form, the precipitation of crystals of any crystal- 
lizable substance it may contain, is greatly promoted by 
adding to the mixture pure crystals of that substance . This 
process is called by chemists, "seeding out." 

With the purpose referred to in view, ready formed 
crystals of niter are often added to hasten the precipitation 
of crystals from the mother liquor in the manufacture of 
that article and these crystals are called "mother crystals." 
Old sugar is often thrown into the kettle to promote the 
crystallization of fresh sugar from dense maple syrups. 
But one of the most striking examples of the operation of 
the principle is found in the behavior of carbonate of lime 
when dissolved in sea water. 

The water of the ocean holds in solution uniformly 
twelve hundredths of one per cent of carbonate of lime. 
Now if a quantity of sea water be put into a bottle, it may 
be kept for any number of years without the slightest 
trace of precipitation. But if into the bottled water a few 
crystals of carbonate of lime be dropped, precipitation will 



154 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

be set up and will proceed rapidly until the quantity in 
solution in the water will be reduced to nine-hundredths 
of one per cent; three-hundredths of the carbonate having 
been, "seeded out." 

We will suppose now that the ions, electrons, corpuscles, 
or what not, that consititute the basic elements in which 
the vital forces are inherent, possess the tendencies that 
lead them into the construction of, or arrangement into, 
the physical forms from which spring any and every 
one of the known kind of living beings and everyone of the 
known characteristics of vital function. We must assume 
also, as before indicated, that these tendencies embrace 
every known organic form and every form of vital mani- 
festation, and that no forms can possibly occur that are 
not the product of these elements. 

In the tree, for example, when these vital corpuscles are 
being "seeded out" so to speak; when one lamp is being 
lighted by another, to use the expressive language of the 
East, the tendencies of such corpuscles cause them, or the 
coarse atoms and molecules they control or direct, to 
assume the form of a tree. By virtue of these same 
tendencies this tree begins searching for food, and develop- 
ing all the features that go to constitute a tree as well as 
evolving all its products. In the chick, on the other hand, 
the tendencies of the forces bound up in the corresponding 
corpuscles, automatically point out its favorite food, the 
method of obtaining it, and also instigate the desire for it 
as well as ' ae inclination for the perpetuation of its kind. 
In short the tree and the chick, like all other living things, 
are in the last analysis absolute automatons. 

If it happen that the corpuscles thus "seeded out" from 
the vast alembic of nature are sufficiently erratic in 
character, sufficiently off of the direct line to materially 
disturb the old order without effectually inaugurating a 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 155 

new one ; sufficiently erratic to produce a freak without 
establishing a species, the individual in which this happens 
will prove to be unfit and will be eliminated by natural 
selection. 

The revelations of Mendelism seem to point to the 
conclusion that these essential vital corpuscles are not 
greatly modified while being incorporated together into 
new individuals. This is indicated by the fact that races 
mingled and bred together for ages, never completely mix 
or unite in blood. The different elements of the combina- 
tion are liable under such circumstances to crop out through 
startlingly long periods of time. Indeed there are instances 
in both animal and plant life in which reversions occur to 
supposed ancestral forms, or to features of ancestral forms 
that had apparently been discarded by the particular 
species for millions of years. 

This would not be so hard to realize, if we could bring 
ourselves to believe that these stubborn reversions were 
merely the occasional incorporation from nature's vast 
storehouse, of certain essential vital corpuscles of the kind 
wont to be used by ancestral organisms in the remote ages 
of the past; in short, that in the particular instance the 
"seeding out" had been imperfectly effected. 

Various authors have adduced instances of seeming 
reversion which was indicated by the appearance in man of 
certain lower animal traits, as evidence of his descent from 
lower animal forms. 

Among the traits adduced have been instances of close 
resemblance in appearance and behavior of certain 
degenerates, to those of a goose or sheep or some other 
animal, while Darwin himself adduces the sporadic power 
in the human being, of the voluntary regurgitation 
of food, or partial rumination, as evidence of such descent. 
It is perfectly obvious, however, that neither goose, sheep 



156 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

nor cow could by any possibility have ever been in the line 
of man's descent. 

But if we could suppose that in the individual case, the 
germ group of vital corpuscles was so laxly combined or 
organized as that it let in from the common life-resevoir, 
which is possibly coextensive with the universe, one or 
more vital corpuscles which, with their tendencies belonged 
to such lower forms, or was properly adapted for use in 
such lower forms, we should have an explanation more con- 
sonant with reason even if somewhat fantastic. 

And if it could be shown to be true that vital corpuscles 
are primarily endowed with the energy and tendencies 
that carry them through the production of all the vari- 
ous transformations or metamorphoses manifested by 
living organisms, we should have supplied us an ex- 
planation of all the many complex changes in the develop- 
ment of insect life, that have hitherto proved inexplicable. 

In that case we should only have to suppose that the 
primary germ-group or vital molecule, consists of vital 
corpuscles possessed of vibratory powers which in some- 
thing like the fashion of the boomerang, carry the insect or 
other organism through all the varied transformations or 
metamorphoses observed in the life history of each individ- 
ual. Like a lightning change artist or a developing sky- 
rocket, when sent aloft, the germinal group of corpuscles 
contains within itself, as an original and perpetual endow- 
ment, the energy or at least the tendencies, that carry 
the resulting individual through all the transforma- 
tions experienced throughout its life history. 

A whole race of young birds that have never seen or 
known any land other than that in which they were bred, 
will gather year by year from far and wide, in response to 
some mysterious signal, and by trackless routes over con- 
tinent and ocean migrate to unknown regions, perhaps 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 157 

half the circuit of the earth away ; while the fishes constitut- 
ing the entire habitancy of a lakelet,will upon the approach- 
ing disappearance of the water by reason of drouth, bury 
themselves both great and small, in the mud of the bottom, 
though this may be their first experience of such a drouth 
in many generations. 

How did the fishes learn to bury themselves in the mud 
on the approach of the first drying-up in all their experience? 
And how did the birds learn the lesson of migration along 
paths and through regions to them absolutely unknown? 
Or if the parents learned the lesson, how did they teach it 
to their offspring and how did they transmit it to their 
posterity? As well ask how the boomerang learned to 
return to the hand that threw it, or how the skyrocket 
learned, when sent aloft, to pirouette in the air. 

The performance of the birds and fishes is a response to a 
larger complex of forces than that of the skyrocket and the 
boomerang, and is seemingly less pre-arranged, but both 
are equally responsive and equally automatic. From 
nature's limitless store, were "seeded out" the essential 
vital corpuscles that would be required to build up a bird 
or a fish, responsive to mysterious notes of warning unreal- 
izable by man, impelling it to bury itself or to migrate, 
though this should prove to be the first experience of such 
need in all the history of the race. And if there happened 
to occur in any line, a departure from the appropriate 
type, that is, if there happened to be an error in the "seed- 
ing out," natural selection would effect its elimination 
when conditions required. 

In man all the physical forms of the various tissues and 
organs, and many of the functions, are developed by such 
tendencies of the basic vital elements, in a manner as 
automatic as that observed in the tree. And later other 
faculties or functions, such as thought, will, desire and the 



158 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

like, are developed in the same sponanteous or automatic 
way in the subconscious, after this has been informed 
through the medium of the conscious. 

In some such way must have been produced all the 
wonderful examples of mathematical, musical and invent- 
ive genius, as indeed of all forms of genius of whatever 
character, that have stood forth among the marvels of 
human history. In this way too their inspiration has been 
manifested and made effective. Indeed it is hardly to be 
doubted that in the dullest human being, there slumbers 
the possibility of a Blind Tom, a Colburn, an Edison, and 
even a Newton, or a Shakespeare. The result, in all 
likelihood, depends upon the character or nature of the 
intimate structure of the organic basis, and this may 
sometimes be measurably supplied by an accidental modi- 
fication of the tissues of the brain or some other adven- 
titious influence. 

In the oft repeated story of the servant girl who upon 
the coming on of a fever, was enabled to repeat passages 
of the Talmud which she had casually heard read at her 
window, though at the moment of hearing and until the 
coming on of the fever she could not have repeated a 
single word of them; something like this must have taken 
place. Some character or some order of obstruction must 
have been removed by the fever, which in health had 
prevented the reproduction of the impressions that had 
been made subconsciously in the neurons at the time of 
hearing the reading. 

A like power of revealing the indwelling intelligence of 
the universal energy in association with organic elements, 
pervades not only the human race, but also every form of 
life in a greater or less degree. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 159 



The True, The Beautiful and The Good 

Age-long discussion has prevailed among philosophers 
as to the source, nature and basis of what has been termed, 
"the true, the beautiful and the good." And probably at 
no time in the past have the partisans of opposing views 
been farther apart than at present. 

A large part of this diversity of view is doubtless due to 
a want of understanding and agreement, as to the exact 
scope and meaning of the terms involved in the discussion. 

It would be exceedingly difficult to settle upon a defini- 
tion, in a wide sense, of any one of these terms that would 
meet with the approval of even a majority of those who 
give the matter attention. 

Notions of the "true" probably present less diversity 
than either of the other divisions. Indeed it is not easy 
to escape the inference that beauty or the beautiful and the 
good on final analysis are merged in the true. Perhaps the 
most appropirate definition of the true is one drawn from 
the root signification of the term, namely, that which 
stands the test of trial. 

Primarily that is beautiful for each individual which 
on account of its form, structure and coloring is pleasing to 
look upon. In the secondary sense, things in the abstract 
are regarded as beautiful when they produce a similar 
or kindred influence on the mind. 

The term "good" as used in this connection has purely 
an ethical meaning, and comprehends the spirit and bear- 
ing with which we seek the welfare and happiness of others, 
while ourselves obeying the teachings approved by the 
consciences of men in general, as being just and right. 
The main question to be considered here is the basic nature 
of the terms and concepts under review. 



160 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

Is there an ultimate, unvarying and universal standard 
by which truth, beauty and goodness are to be tested and 
judged? The answer is not far to seek. If there exists 
an absolute standard, it is not yet within the grasp of 
human understanding. It would be exceeding difficult 
to settle upon a definition of any one of these terms that 
would meet with general approval. 

The terms "Good and beautiful" seem to be largely if 
not entirely relative. The same act which is regarded as 
beneficient on the part of one person or of one class and 
held to be good, would be regarded as bad on the part 
of another. Everywhere the motive of the act seems to 
determine its character as good or the contrary, and so 
widely divergent are the judgments placed on conduct 
that the pragmatists are not easily withstood when they 
insist that the good or bad character of things depend upon 
their workableness. 

Goodness may be regarded as purely a relative matter 
except in its aspect of kindliness. In this regard there 
may come into play the softening effect of the undulations 
that constitute the dynamic source and basis of all our 
feelings. 

And what of beauty or the sense of the beautiful? Is 
there a universal and changeless standard or rule which we 
can everywhere apply, and by which we can test what is 
beautiful and what is not? Some sort of rule there must 
be, even though that rule be a succession of accidents; for 
how can we say that anything is beautiful or that it is not 
unless we can compare it with other things that are recog- 
nized as beautiful, or contrast it with still others that are 
not so considered? 

But if it be true that the notion of beauty is based upon 
the correspondence or harmony between certain external 
things and the concepts of such things, as these concepts 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 161 

tend to be formed in our minds in response to or under the 
influence of a certain character or certain classes of the 
vibrations that uniformly constitute the manifestation 
or expression of energy, we are supplied with a guiding 
principle for a judgment of the beautiful that is unchang- 
ing and well-nigh universal. It is here that thought and 
thing are rocked in the same cradle. 

It was a contention of Darwin that beauty of song and 
plumage among birds has been developed by the selection 
on the part of the females, of such males as are best endowed 
in these respects; the less beautiful males, wherever there 
was a surplus, being left unmated. Beauty in flowers, 
it was similarly contended, is produced or devloped by 
insects making a practice of selecting the gaudiest or most 
beautiful flowers when searching for nectar. The result of 
this was claimed to be that such flowers were better and 
more certainly pollinized than homelier and less conspic- 
uous ones. 

But careful thought cannot fail to impress us with the 
improbability of the view that the production of beauty 
in birds, flowers or any other thing can be effected in this 
way. There must be something else operative in these 
cases besides blind chance or accident. Beauty in such 
a contest could never win, could never make any headway, 
unless the chances were in its favor, — unless the dice were 
loaded. 

The tastes and the expressed choice of the females in the 
example of birds, could never determine the evolution or 
the development of beauty in the males, unless the females 
were already endowed with a permanent standard of taste 
for the measurement or test of beauty, and by which they 
were controlled in its selection. The doctrine of chance 
absolutely prohibits it. In the absence of such a standard 
as we have here supposed, by which the females could be 



162 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

guided in their choice, each generation must on the average 
undo what had been accomplished by the females of the 
generation before. 

The same rule would apply to plants as affected by in- 
sects. While it is true that mere gaudiness or conspicuous- 
ness might be determined in their development by insect 
selection, beauty simply as such never could be. Here 
too the dice must be loaded, and the appeal of conspicu- 
ousness in the case of the gaudy flowers is the lead that 
loads the dice and measureably eliminates chance. 

No fixed or steady direction can ever be pursued by 
chance. If a man should set out on a journey regulating 
the direction of his steps by tossing coins, taking a step 
forward when "heads" came, and a step backward when 
"tails" came, the period of a hundred or a million years 
might come to a close and find him practically where he had 
started. The complex beauty, therefore, that addresses 
itself to human judgment or fancy as such, must have a 
different and deeper cause than such unguided selection. 

It may be objected, however, that if such reciprocal 
correspondence, such harmony must exist between mind 
and external things, if such is the all-pervading law of 
beauty, why is it that the beautiful to one is not the 
beautiful to all? Why is it that there are so many and 
such diverse standards of beauty? The answer is that 
mental processes are no more restricted to one exact line 
of development than objects in nature are restricted to one 
exact pattern; there is always a certain range of possible 
variation. 

Thus frost flowers and mosaic, though depending for 
their existence on the simple crystallizing force of congeal- 
ing water, take on a multiplicity of forms. Lissajou's 
figures produced by the vibrations of a deflected pendulum; 
dust patterns made by musical vibrations acting on sheets 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 163 

of tense membrane, and figures formed by iron filings in 
fields of magnetic force, beside innumerable similar figures, 
all depending, so far as we know, on vibratory forces as 
homogeneous as the elements of thought or thought 
vibrations in the brain, assume forms that vary within 
wide limits. 

The same succession of muscial sounds is not agreeable 
to all minds alike, yet few will doubt that harmony of both 
vocal and instrumental music with the mental vibrations 
which they arouse, and into which they may be translated 
is the basis of the appreciation of music. Nor will any 
one contend that because different peoples have different 
notions and standards of music that therefore there is no 
basic truth or law of music. 

And aside from the heterogeneousness of the operative 
forces employed in the production of thought or physical 
form, whether found in animate or inanimate nature, 
such forces must deal with more or less refractory material 
elements, elements that are not perfectly responsive, and 
the products or results of which must consequently take 
on different forms. A certain degree of heterogeneity in 
vital processes, or the forces underlying them, seems indis- 
pensable to their continuance. It is posssible that there 
may be such a thing in nature as too much harmony. 

It is permissable then to infer that a vital force, or the 
undifferentiated force as it exists in the vast reservoir of 
nature may within certain not very extensive limits develop 
different forms of beauty in living beings, as the like force 
develops differing rules of appreciation among discriminat- 
ing intelligences. 

Misleading features and confusion are sometimes intro- 
duced into the problem as the result of association; things 
that are not at all attractive to us of themselves, being 



164 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

often rendered so by the attractiveness of elements bor- 
rowed from other things that are of themselves agreeable. 

To this power of appropriating elements from pleasant 
experiences, ideas and emotions, and thus obscuring 
unpleasant features of such things, may in a measure be 
attributed the vogue of what is called pragmatism. This 
is simply the process of rendering things agreeable or 
commendable and pleasant, that are otherwise not so, by 
borrowing or appropriating elements from other ideas or 
other things that are primarily agreeable, or that meet 
with the mind's approval. This view finds everywhere 
support in the common experience of the race, and even 
probably in that of the lower animals. 

A sour mixture may be rendered sweet with sugar, but 
the acid is still in the mixture and undestroyed. It has 
simply been obscured and lost sight of by reason of the 
presence of the stronger sweet. Pain which is ordinarily 
of the most dreaded kind may be transformed into a posi- 
tive pleasure by the incorporation into its idea of ele- 
ments borrowed from agreeable experiences. Thus the 
zeal of a martyr or the haughty pride of a tortured savage, 
may cause the flames that are consuming his flesh to 
impress his senses with a thrill of delight. But it is not 
that the pain has here actually become pleasure, it is only 
that the pleasant elements borrowed from cherished hopes, 
or the satisfying complaisance of withering hatred, incor- 
porated into experience, have obscured and overwhelmed 
the primarily painful elements. 

So by the long continued practice of such borrowing, the 
native appreciation of whatever is primarily the true, the 
beautiful or the good, may be grafted on its opposite so as 
to make this appear to the subject to be the true, the 
beautiful or the good. But the ultimate basis, the final 
standard is the correspondence of the internal with the 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 165 

external order, both founded on the energy vibrations and 
vibration groupings that are everywhere the unchanging 
operative agencies. 

"Pretty is as pretty does," means simply that ungainly 
features of mind or person may become agreeable or 
attractive by being associated with agreeable conduct. 
The harshest sounds may become as sweet as any music, 
when they announce the approach of relief to a sorely-tried 
beleaguered garrison, rescue to the captive at the threshold 
of torture, or when in fancy they may transport the home- 
sick wanderer back to the endeared associations of the 
home of his childhood and the circle of its loved ones. 

In this light still other seeming contradictions in the 
phenomena of taste and habit will disappear. Thus one 
race of people will wear white for mourning and another 
black, and whichever color, it may be, it will suggest 
unpleasant experiences and give rise to sadness or sorrow. 
Not that either color is in its nature primarily productive 
of sadness, but that whichever color is worn, borrows 
a suggestion of sadness from being associated with feelings 
of sadness caused by past partings from loved ones. 

Especially may the effects of such imposed vibrations 
be observed in the training of children, since in them the 
neurons are exceptionally plastic and impressionable. 
How else are we to account for the fact that so large a 
majority of men stubbornly and blindly cling to the social 
and political views of their parents; and above all how has 
blind superstition, in the glare of the flooding light of 
science and reason, been enabled to keep the darksome 
shadow of her wings spread over the minds of so vast a 
majority of the human race ? If for a single generation, the 
minds of men could be left wholly free to the influence of 
truth, the result would be nothing less than a new heaven 
and a new earth. 



166 VIBRATION AND LIFE 



The Source of Moral Law 

As a corollary to the principles set forth when treating 
of the law of beauty, it follows that all recognition of 
truth, or the true standard of the fitness of things, is a 
result of the effort of the mind to harmonize impressions 
received by it from without with the rules framed for its 
guidance by the orderly groupings of ether waves manifes- 
ted in the transmission of radiant energy. 

Out of the various combinations of the rich store of 
accumulated vibrations coming to us originally from the 
realms of space, either directly or indirectly, in the form 
of light, heat or actinism or possibly in still other forms of 
force movement, shapes of beauty spring into being under 
the painter's brush, grand symphonies awake at the 
musician's touch, immortal rounds of verse take form in 
the poet's fancy, while they who under its kindly guidance 
seek out the old, the eternal paths of justice and virtue and 
love, shall listen to sweet whisperings of rest and peace. 

This all-pervading principle, this far-reaching harmony, 
this lofty music is the standard of truth and beauty and 
goodness for the universe; the rule of the infinite. And if 
other worlds are peopled by intelligent sentient beings, 
their feelings, tastes and moral laws as well must be essen- 
tially the same as our own. As far as we can know this 
harmony and symmetry appear as the absolute, the final 
standard of truth and beauty. 

It is but reasonable to infer from the foregoing premises 
that the characteristics of feelings, ideas, emotions and 
the like, as being pleasant or otherwise, depend upon and 
are determined by the character and mode of combination 
of the vibrations that compose them and bring them into 
consciousness. The gentler and more harmonious com- 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 167 

binations are supposed to constitute the pleasant, while 
the harsh and discordant or inharmoniously grouped 
vibrations constitute the unpleasant experiences. 

It is the history of the common experience of mankind 
that pain ceases to be pain, in memory, as the undulations 
that are the cause and the record of it in the brain become 
slower, more gentle and more completely harmonized with 
the laspe of time. And if at any time we are aroused 
to harsh feelings toward our fellow beings, feelings of anger, 
resentment or hate, our experience teaches us that there 
will yet come a time when the harsh wave groups in the 
brain will soften, and memory will find them more in 
harmony with the conduct which we were led to condemn 
than at the time the fancied wrongs were fresh. In the 
course of life's experience, we reach a stage where we are 
led, all unconsciously, it may be, to anticipate the more 
benevolent outcome, and we then incline and seek to 
pursue the course that past experience teaches us will 
with the lapse of years, be favored with the approval of 
our conscience. We relent and we forgive. 

All the harsher ideas, feelings and emotions, represent- 
ing as they do, violent, tumultuous and discordant dis- 
turbances of consciousness must in the very nature of 
things, if left to themselves, take on a more congenial 
character. Therefore feelings of hate, as the vibrations 
that give rise to them lose their harshness and their 
character of disorder, are changed into kindliness and 
forgiveness; just as the tumult of the earthquake reaches 
far away listeners almost as music. 

It is the common lesson of history that the party of mercy 
is ever the one that in the end receives the world's approval. 
"Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy," 
is a precept widely accepted as divine; and one who read 
the book of nature with the eye of a seer has told us : — 



168 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

"The quality of mercy is not strained, 

It droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven," 

A famous poet has charmingly written : — 

"Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle 
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime; 
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the 

turtle, 
Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime?" 

There is many a land where "The rage of the vulture, 
now melts into sorrow," but the flooding searchlights of 
all the twinkling stars reveal no retreat where "The love 
of the turtle now maddens to crime." 

Indeed if hate were not fed with food of perennial wrong, 
it would fade from the hearts of the children of men. In 
its very nature it is transitory and evanescent. And to 
contend, whether through motives of cowardly fear, 
blind ignorance, or sinister design, that there exists or 
could exist a being of infinite power and wisdom and 
justice and mercy, who yet can indulge a feeling of eternal 
hate, is to contend that a being of infinite wisdom, power, 
justice, and mercy eternally violates laws whose author 
he must be in order to be at all. 

Conscience 

Conscience is the response of the soul or the intelligent 
ego in man and animals, to the orderly vibration groups 
affecting it, and which impress it with regard to the laws 
of conduct related to its own duty, and to the rights, 
privileges and happiness of those to whose appeal it must 
hearken. Nor indeed can plants be truthfully regarded 
as wholly wanting in an inchoate conscience. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 169 

We have remarked how the wild-pea vine while trying 
to climb the smooth stone wall with the help of its tendrils, 
when finding nothing that its tendrils could grasp, changed 
them into suckers, and with their aid proceeded to dis- 
charge its duty of exposing its flower buds to the sun. 
Can anyone hesitate to believe that in the meantime, with- 
in the protoplasmic mass of its cells which are the seat 
of its life,there developed an erethism,a stress of conscience 
according to the plant standard of such things, that promp- 
ted it and pointed out to it its duty, and that was relieved 
when the vine had obeyed its impulse, and the sucker 
had been substituted for the tendril? 

Lower animals of many kinds, after having inflicted 
injuries or insult upon one another or upon man, have 
frequently been known to manifest every evidence of a 
sentiment of regret. The behavior of gregarious animals 
toward each other, as indeed the whole comity of animal 
life, in the relation of each to its kind throughout nature, 
is based upon the operation of a principle that is essentially 
conscience. 

Animals are necessarily prompted by some monitor 
indicating to them the spirit they are to manifest toward 
their fellows, and that same monitor either approves or 
disapproves to them their behavior. But in man conscience 
seems to have its widest range, for it is that which in 
normal life approves to the individual his every approach 
to the all pervading harmonies and symmetries of right 
conduct and feeling, and condemns every departure or 
recession therefrom. 

The true musician hangs with rapt delight upon the 
harmony, the melody, the truth of his music. To him 
discord is pain, and when due to his own failure or short- 
coming, it becomes in his sight a species of sin. On the 
other hand, a vivid pleasure is experienced when the right 



170 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

notes are struck, when the proper chords are touched and 
the true melodies and harmonies achieved. 

The feeling of self-reproach that punishes the musician 
for the false note, the scholar for the misspelt word or the 
slip in grammar, the courtier for the awkward bow, or the 
prowler of the night for his theft, are essentially the same 
throughout. The experience of all alike results from a 
conscious departure from the true standard in these several 
departments. 

When the beautiful language of Greece was in the mak- 
ing, and skill in archery was regarded as of far greater 
moment than a judicious discernment of the rights of 
property and person, the most painful sense of faulty 
conduct known to the man of the period was experienced 
when his arrow fell wide of the mark. On such occasions 
"Amartaneka," ("I have missed the mark") was the 
archer's expression for the saddest general experience and 
the largest cause of self abasement, known to the man of 
his era. So when later a fuller and a higher sense of duty 
developed, and men began to feel the need of words in 
which to make confession, when they realized that they 
had culpably failed in the performance of social obligations 
and had violated their own convictions and society's re- 
quirements of right doing, still mindful of their experience 
with the bow and the arrow, they found no word more 
expressive of their state of feeling than "Amartaneka" ("I 
have missed the mark. I have sinned,") now giving the 
term its figurative or secondary meaning. 

And so it ever is with that higher harmony, that loftier 
music whose responsive strings are touched by the fingers 
of the ether waves, and to whose measure the soul in 
search of happiness and peace must keep time submissively. 
The far-reaching and never-ceasing influence of sense- 
impressing ether waves upon the soul or life principle, in 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 171 

the final outcome, makes always and everywhere for kind- 
ness, for peace, for order, for justice and right, and further- 
more tends ceaselessly to inculcate and to impress the 
enforcement of these principles as an imperative duty and 
a sure way to a pleasant reward. In this initial fountain 
and source the true, the beautiful and the good meet and 
merge into one. 

And any seeming departure from the rule so imposed, 
appears only on the by-paths of selfish interests that grow 
out of the promptings of the exaggerated necessities of 
individual and race protection and perpetuation. Sin 
and wrong and violence and hate are but the little eddies 
and countercurrents of selfish interests encountered in the 
vast riverflow of peace and harmony and love that is 
forever sweeping through the universe. And forever 
present and ministering is the monitor; for conscience 
is an ether lesson, taught, since eternity first gave birth to 
time, in more or less completeness, to every living thing. 

Religion 

We have finally reached a stage in our investigation 
where we may attempt with some degre of confidence to 
enquire into the essential nature of religion, or the religious 
feeling ^,nd to ascertain whether we may not also trace 
it to the gentler undulations of the ether. 

In pursuing this inquiry it is desirable and important, 
at the outset, clearly and sharply to distinguish between 
religion and so-called theology. For while as a rule the 
particuar views one may happen to hold in regard to the 
character of the divinity he worships, will necessarily 
affect his religious notions and feelings, the religious feeling 
may exist in the most highly developed form, without 
belief in any superior personal power whatever. 



172 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

Thus the monist may experience a religious feeling of 
the most refined and exalted nature, though most firmly 
confident that there is nothing in the universe superior to 
himself, nothing in the universe of which he is not himself 
necessarily a part; firmly confident that there could not be 
an infinite energy and still something over. For even here 
the contemplation of the infinite whole may impress such 
an one full as forcefully, as would the contemplation of an 
infinite being, personal and separate from himself, if such 
a thing could be imagined, looking down upon him from 
some lonely seat in space, and keeping pace in retreat with 
the growing intelligence of mankind. 

The religious feeling then, or religion if better thus 
denominated, may be regarded as the harmonious ming- 
ling in consciousness of love and awe, experienced in the 
contemplation of an object vaguely conceived as being 
vast, dim, kindly and far away. Deeper still than this, 
I would define religion as in reality a reaction or a response 
of the soul or conscious being, to the gentlest, most ample 
and most harmoniously grouped of all the ether waves or 
other vibrations capable of affecting the mind by their 
action on the neurons of the nervous system, either in 
their conscious or subconscious functions. In short, 
religion may be regarded as the sense of the most refined 
music and harmony open to the experience of the human 
race, if even thus restricted. 

In the childhood of the race, when uttered words came 
sounding back from cliff and crag and cave, men conceived 
that this was the voice of one calling from out of the unseen 
and they personified it and gave it a name; even deified 
it and called it, "Echo." Later when the gentle ether- 
whisperings that then as now were wont to flood the souls 
of men, were sent away to seek credentials of whence they 
came, the gentle and far-seeming echo that returned, men 
personified and deified and called it, "God." 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 173 

We have proceeded thus far on the assumption that all 
mental affections and all outcome of mentation whatever, 
as well as all vital physical forms and processes, are due to 
vibrations in the neurons or ganglions of the nervous 
system, excited by the action of a form of energy of uncer- 
tain nature, operating upon, from or through, a class of 
peculiar vital corpucles. These activities are supposed 
to proceed partly from such ever active vital corpuscles 
and partly from radiant ether waves. 

In order to obtain some degree of enlightenment as to 
the limitations of the forces producing and influencing our 
thoughts and feelings, it is pertinent to inquire once more 
whether there probably can be any response in the neurons 
to vibrations from external sources, where the internal 
structures and functions are not already attuned to the 
vibrations which they may receive and incorporate. 

If a number of tuning forks be attuned in perfect unison, 
and mounted upon resonance boxes anywhere within 
several yards of each other, and then one of them be set 
into vigorous vibration, all the others will in a few seconds 
begin to vibrate. If the damper be gently raised from one 
of the strings of a piano, and the note corresponding to 
that string be sung loudly into the instrument, the string 
will be thrown into vibrations that may be heard for several 
seconds after the voice ceases. So also if several clocks 
be set on a shelf and then one of them be started to running, 
all of them with the same length of pendulum will likewise 
be set to running, while the others will not be affected. 

Facts of this kind, which might be added to indefinitely, 
lend an air of strong probability to the inference that all 
vibrations that reach the neurons through the senses or in 
any other way are lost, so far as mentation is concerned, 
except such as find there other vibrations of an amplitude 
and quality fairly equal to their own, But it is essential 



174 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

that this correspondence shall not be absolute and invari- 
able. If absolute correspondence were required, if an in- 
coming vibration could fall in with only such others as were 
its exact counterpart, the conditions required for arousing 
memories or releasing stored vibrations could not be fully 
met; for then only a very small part of the fading memory 
waves might find their counterparts and be recalled. But 
if memory waves might be aroused by others having only an 
approximate correpondence, a much larger range might be 
revived. 

Again, among the revelations of the spectroscope, is the 
fact that only the kind of light absorbed by any substance 
while in a state of vapor, will be given out by that substance 
when made self-luminous. Sodium, for example, when in 
a state of vapor absorbs only the yellow rays of light, and 
when made self-luminous gives out only yellow light. 

It is not then a violent presumption from this general 
law that in the metamorphoses of the processes of assimi- 
lation and nutrition, organic substances that are employed 
as food give out the same forms of force, the same nature 
of vibrations, that were absorbed by them from the sun 
and other luminaries during their growth, and incorporated 
into their substance; and that in the course of nutrition 
all these various classes of vibrations may be released and 
then utilized in the activities of the neurons. 

It is most likely that it is the vibrations which are 
continuously and persistently given off in the neurons, 
that supply the force which directs the routine work of 
both mind and body from the time of their first active 
existence. Such vibrations must be present before the 
young being has experienced sight or hearing or touch or 
taste. The work they do is for the most part unconscious- 
ly or imperceptibly done, and the information they supply 
is independent of sense. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 175 

And yet even the quiet flowing of the blood in the veins 
and the currents of lymph in its ducts, may like the swish 
of the current of a river produce a vague awakening of 
consciousness or weave vague and dim shadows of ideas, 
which stored as memory tints fringe and soften the aspects 
of ideas arising later in life. Most likely it is some such 
vibrations as these that under the guidance of vital mole- 
cules or corpuscles are effecting the symmetrical growth of 
related parts, and the development of organs and tissues 
throughout the system. For all these are idealized or 
purposed forms that have their origin in the subconscious 
or the unconscious, and correspond to the consciously 
sense-given ideas that are later developed in conscious 
fields. 

The energy derived from the food we eat, which 
itself is derived originally from the sun, and that which 
is gathered directly from solar radiation, might at first 
glance appear to constitute the entire supply available 
for the development and activities of both mind and body. 

But there seems to enter into our thoughts, feelings and 
ideas, a class of elements so vague and gentle, that we 
scarce feel able to ascribe them to any of the sensible forms 
of force hitherto examined, as affecting our senses and 
operating on our minds or our processes of thought. 

And yet all our thoughts and feelings, as well as activi- 
ties of every other kind, both mental and physical, must 
be aroused in some such sense as that one might say they 
are produced by a form of the common energy coming 
either from far away luminaries, or else derived from the 
same source through the medium of nutrition. The 
driving power of the universe comes wholly from natural 
sources. There now goes on no process of creation; no 
miracle now interferes with the course of nature. 

It follows then, that every springing plant, every unfold- 



176 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

ing bud, every leaf in its pattern of shapeliness, every flower 
with its enchanting charm of fragrance and beauty, every 
fruit in its wealth of tint and flavor, whatever may have 
been its beginning, and whatever may still be the guiding- 
power, is now built up and developed by the aid of the 
fostering forces of nature playing upon it mainly from the 
worlds beyond. 

It is the tiny waves of the ether, coming chiefly from the 
Sun that by their ceaseless peltings, drive every atom and 
every molecule into its place. Animal life derives nearly, 
if not quite all, its incorporated sustenance, either directly 
or indirectly from the plant; and thus from ether waves 
that are essentially light and heat and chemism and the 
like, all of man, except the mysterious soul that animates 
him, must ultimately spring. 

But light and its kindred forces come to us from other 
sources than the Sun. And pursuing the inquiry further, 
we come to realize that if the worship of the Sun was a 
generous recognition of the power that orb exerts in the 
maintenance and control of life in the earth, those who 
chose their deities from among the stars approached still 
nearer to the proximate source of the tenderest feelings 
that minister to the pleasures of earthly existence, namely : 
love and religion. For aside from any assertion of special 
religious experience, or of fancied revelation, the feeling 
recognized as religion pervades the human race. Not 
only is this true of man, but a similar feeling is without 
doubt experienced by the lower animals as well. 

The multifarious creeds and systems of mythology and 
so-called theology, that fleck the fields of history and geog- 
raphy, are but the outgrowth of the craving and hunger 
inherent in the human mind and heart, and they all spring 
primarily from the religious feeling implanted by nature 
from the very beginning in every human breast. 



VIBRATION AND LIFE 177 

It has been conjectured that every inch of space in the 
whole vault of the heavens is occupied by the surface of a 
sun; and from this assumption it has been reasoned that 
somewhere in their journeyings through endless space, 
the rays of light must be dissipated and lost; since other- 
wise, the entire vault of the heavens must appear as a 
solidly luminous expanse. 

And that light and heat and their like are lost to all 
human perception, is a conclusion that would naturally 
follow from the laws by which the transmission of all 
radiant energy is probably controlled. For, since as already 
pointed out, and as we have increasing reason to believe, 
even though it be not satisfactorily proven, the waves of 
which radiant energy consists, grow milder, gentler and 
weaker, even if not slower, as a necessary result of diffusion, 
they must somewhere in boundless space become too mild 
to produce impressions as light or heat. And, moreover, 
they must somehow and somewhere be changed back into 
the vibrations of gravity from which they originally sprung. 

And when these forms of force with such others as may 
have possessed the power of affecting sensation, have sub- 
sided below the point of intensity at which they may pro- 
duce sensations, might it not be that they continue to 
impress consciousness as the gentlest and most grateful 
of all the influences it is capable of receiving? 

Might it not be that light and other kindred forces, even 
from the farthest stars, softened till they have subsided 
beyond all ordinary recognition, have become organized 
in the food we eat, to be transformed in the processes of 
nutrition and retrograde changes, into a residuary store 
of gentle vibrations in the neurons; and that there they are 
capable of responding to brother waves coming from the 
original, or other and secondary but related sources? 

If this be true, then as naturally as^the stars give out 
their light, would the soul dispense tbisjstore of gentle 



178 VIBRATION AND LIFE 

forces, and most likely too, and even of necessity, in the 
way in which it came? For, "Love and love only is the 
loan for love." Or back toward its transformed and 
personified author it would be reflected, the very essence 
of love-religion. 

Dominated and prompted by such influences, it is little 
wonder that men in all lands and in all ages have been led 
to the choice of deities whom they regarded as approving 
what is deemed to be righteous and kind, and as seemingly 
the adequate source and author of all that is gentlest and 
best in their minds and hearts. 

These benign and gentle influences exerted by the 
stars, it is easy to believe, have much to do in directing the 
course of life upon the earth. "Canst thou bind the sweet 
influences of the Pleiades?" are the words that Job puts 
into the mouth of Jehovah. There does not appear to be 
in the brilliance of the sun, the gentle influences which 
might produce and sustain the most agreeable states of 
feeling we are capable of experiencing. Delightful reveries, 
gentle reminiscences, do not invite his glare, but court the 
starlight rather. If this be true, it can hardly be that the 
sun is the only agent employed in calling the gentlest of 
all our affections and experiences into being; and surely 
not, unless it is capable of giving out the gentle forces 
from which they are evolved. For, as upon an axiom, we 
may rest in the assumption that there can be no evolution 
without an equivalent antecedent involution. No crea- 
ture is greater than its creator; no stream can rise above 
its source. 

The tenderest feelings, then, the heart can know must 
have a higher origin, a gentler source than any of the 
familiar forms of the common force. And nothing else 
appears as their immediate cause except the fading un- 
dulations of stellar light as they journey through infinite 
space — "the sweet influences of the Pleiades." 



MJG * 



1912 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 095 494 6 



